Nine Lives
by thebondgirl
Summary: "Well...looks like...I've...finally...run out...Boss," he gasped quietly in the direction of the small opening. "And what is it you've run out of DiNozzo?" The gruff voice sounded just that bit scared, and rightly so. Tony smiled grimly. "Al...mosts."
1. Chapter 1

**Nine Lives**

**By: thebondgirl**

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**Description**: "Well... looks like... I've... finally... run out... Boss," he gasped quietly in the direction of the small opening. "And what is it you've run out of DiNozzo?" The gruff voice sounded just that bit scared, and rightly so. Tony smiled grimly. "Al...mosts." Set after 'Chimera', Season Five.

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**A/N**: So, I'm back. And poor Tony, it seems that I'll be picking on him again, multi-chapter style this time. Can I help it if the man just works so well as the team's resident punching bag? :) – Maybe I'll try a comedy out next time around, just to give the guy a break...

Anywho, R&R, pretty please – as with most authors around these parts, I'm thoroughly and irrevocably addicted to reviews... and I could really do with a fix :P Thanks in advance, and enjoy the show! And I apologize for the shorter length of this first chapter – it's more of a teaser really, the next one will be longer, I promise :)

**P.S:** One last thing, just in case anyone wants to know, this piece is set in the actual NCIS universe, and is entirely unrelated to my previous NCIS fic and sequel. Also, there is no pairing intended, although if you'd really like to, you could probably squint and get a smidgen of Tiva. And I'm pretty sure I've invented a few more credentials to add to Gibbs' already relatively impressive collection... couldn't resist :P

**P.P.S: **I'm telling you all right now that I'll be flexing and bending the rules of science and certain emergency protocols a little in here to suit specific aspects of the plot that cooked itself up in my noggin. So, I'll just apologize right now if randomly any engineers, emergency rescue workers, or experts on the can's and cannot's of radio signals through certain... ahem... obstacles just happen to end up reading this one.

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It was a beautiful night, at least from what little he could see of it. The sky was actually clear for once and he could see a couple of bright stars set against the black. At some point along the line in his varied existence, he'd thought of actually taking the time to learn the names of the constellations, partly out of a curiosity for most everything that he carefully hid away from anyone he was going to be around more than once.

Largely because women loved stargazers.

He never had though. Pity. Could be he never would now.

He huffed a quiet sigh, wary of repeating the previous mistake of taking too deep a breath, and quietly took stock of his rather bleak position for a moment before instead thinking back to the deceptively innocuous events of that evening.

It'd been going on eight o'clock when the team finally made it back to the bullpen after the raid that had closed their latest case... which strangely he couldn't manage to recall the details of. It didn't really matter, he supposed; he remembered the important things about those moments: making a stupid joke to McGee, grinning when Probie laughed in spite of himself, and pretending to be surprised by the head-slap that followed it and to not see the smirk almost hidden behind Gibbs' coffee cup as he passed by on his way to his own desk; using an obscure movie quote to ask Ziva out for celebratory drinks, and honestly surprising himself with the brightness of his own smile when she laughingly agreed...

Those were the tragically short-lived minutes that remained the clearest in his mind, before his memory became a blur of motion and noise; an alarm sounding throughout the building, lights flashing... running, chaos, trying to keep track of three people in particular, but losing sight of them in the melee... a muffled explosion, the building quaking... screams... nearly out, but going back for something... his world erupting with a deafening roar, the ground falling away, and then... nothing.

Until he opened his eyes and realized where he was... and how repetitively terrible his luck seemed to be these past few years. Really, it sometimes felt like he sashayed out of the hospital, always just in time to earn himself a ticket right back in. Thank God for government agency benefits. And hey, at least he hadn't been kidnapped, poisoned, or bludgeoned this time; those were probably his least favorite ways to end up on a stretcher. Although, in all honesty, his current predicament might well bump 'kidnapped' out of the top three, provided he lived long enough to see it through.

A sudden cascade of dust from overhead had him squeezing his eyes shut, losing sight of that precious patch of sky nearly a thirty feet above him, though he wasn't quick enough to hold his breath and ended in a lungful of dirt that wrenched out a series of bone-jarring coughs that left him shaking from pain and exertion once they'd finally subsided. For a while afterward, he couldn't begin to guess how long with his head spinning and throbbing as it was, all he could do was lay there and focus on the rhythmic, albeit tremulous breaths being pulled in and let out. With the sheer amount and size of the debris that had struck him during, and buried him after the explosion and subsequent collapse, he could be fairly certain he'd cracked a large portion of his ribs, though he would bet his month's salary that nothing was actually broken; there wasn't any overt shifting going on as he attempted to breath, just a hell of a lot of pain and the feeling of stretching like a handful of frayed rubber bands. If he moved as little as humanly possible, he just might manage to keep each of those little bastards in one piece, which would sure as hell make recovery a little easier... assuming once again, of course, that he survived to endure it.

As a general rule, he was not an overly pessimistic person, which was no small feat considering his track record, but this one was a real doozie, and he didn't need to be a doctor or, for that matter, a structural engineer to know that even the infamous DiNozzo luck might not be enough to pull him outta this pot without dropping his ass into the fire. Time simply was not on his side in any respect; even if they managed to find him and get to him in anything less than five hours and up, he held no illusions about how hard it would be to actually extract him – to get the necessary equipment down here, never mind finding the room to operate it, would take longer than either himself or the building had left.

With a grimace, he opened his eyes once more and slowly turned his gaze down to settle on the protruding steel rod and the slow but steady stream of blood, visible even in the relative dark, that had saturated the cloth around it and likely begun to pool in the rubble beneath him. The pain that radiated outwards in all directions from the wound outshone even that in his ribs, threatening to scatter his thoughts and rob him of what little calm he possessed, here, lost in the ruins of NCIS.

Even listening to the sporadic, distinctly ominous creaking and groaning of the destroyed building, and the hiss and crackle of gas lines burning with a shelf-life of their own, he couldn't help thinking quite seriously that this building might just outlast him.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Well, I meant to have this up on Sunday, but you know what they say about one's "best laid plans"... Heh. Turns out my account wasn't in favor of functioning properly again, until now. What can I say? Kay Sera, Sera...

Oh, and I've decided that in the interest of quicker updates, since I'm writing this as I go (another lesson I seem to never have learned... sigh), the chapters will end up being shorter than I usually make my chapters for any story. But which would you prefer? Longer updates? Or an update every week, give or take?

I'll be taking votes – cast your ballot here, and the count shall be announced at the next update!

To those who left a review for the previous chapter, thank you so much for your feedback and enthusiasm – for you many silent lurkers... I appreciate your interest all the same :P – perhaps I can coerce you into speaking up? … I'm quite willing to name my next bundle of goldfish after each one of you... Think about it :)

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The dust was still settling and the smoke billowing when the crowd of NCIS employees rose from the cover they'd found, or struggled to stand from where they'd been thrown to survey the damage silhouetted by the setting sun, which was absolute. Looking at the twisted, half-collapsed remains of the building they'd only moments ago evacuated, it was practically as one that the enormity of what had happened hit them, as well as the relief that, given the late hour and the fact that it was a Saturday, they were operating at nearly a quarter of their usual capacity.

Sirens could already be heard fast approaching in the distance, given that the fire department, PD, and the agency's Incident Response Team were automatically notified when the alarms were activated and the order to evacuate executed, and so the lead agents still standing began taking stock of all who had made it outside, in a grim attempt to begin tallying casualties. Off to one side, behind the broad NCIS sign that had protected them from the blast and the worst of the debris, three agents stood dazedly studying the destruction before them, until the oldest of the group promptly brushed aside the haze of shock, and turned to check on his team... only to stop short, his gaze as hard as the words that followed.

"Where's DiNozzo?"

That was enough to snap the other two back to the present, McGee turning immediately to start scanning the rugged crowd, while Ziva looked back to the building, eyes widening in a face gone pale.

"Ziva?" Gibbs asked, quietly, dangerously calm, and both men looked to her as she forced herself to speak.

"I think he... went back inside," she whispered, not wanting to believe it even as the memory slammed into her: running out of the building, halfway to cover before turning back to see Tony freeze at the door, a look of horror stealing across his features – screaming at him to move, then being forced to look away when McGee pulled her along as he was passing her; when she'd looked back again, the doorway was empty. At the time, she'd had only a second to look before the final explosion in the building's foundation detonated and she dove for cover; she couldn't be sure he _hadn't_ gotten out... could she?

"You _think_?" The icy stare was nothing compared to the cold that enveloped her as she remembered again the moment where she saw Tony standing in that doorway... and saw his head turn to look back the way they'd come, his hand releasing the door to let it swing back shut. She swallowed hard.

"He went back inside." She forced her voice to be steady, even at the sick feeling that took root in her stomach and matched perfectly the look on McGee's face, as well as the one that flashed across Gibbs' before his hardened once more and he whipped out his cell phone and hit a number for speed dial.

"But... _why_?" McGee asked plaintively. He stared at what was left of the place that for many, including Tony, was their home away from home, trying very hard not to recall survival rates or the conditions of recovered bodies from past cases involving bombed buildings.

"Worry about the 'why' after we get him out, McGee – you can ask him yourself before I have his ass put on suspension for this stunt," Gibbs snapped, limping almost imperceptibly as he walked away without another word to greet the arriving emergency workers, his phone still pressed tightly up against his ear.

McGee was waiting for Ziva to say something, but at her continued silence, he finally shifted his gaze and locked onto hers. When at last she spoke, her voice had gone quiet again; it bore no less of its usual stoicism, even though her face remained pale, her eyes round and solemn and far too old for her years.

"I cannot bear to bury another friend." A shudder ran through him at the simple, sorrowful statement, and his thoughts ran immediately to Kate, and the wound left by her death whose ache lingered even now. It took a conscious effort to separate himself from it, and to refuse to even consider adding Tony to its depths.

"He'll be fine." It came out more as a wavering croak, and he cleared his throat and growled at himself in his head to try not to sound so damn meek about it. "He'll be fine," he repeated, inwardly applauding how convincing it sounded this time round. "You know Tony, he's like a cat – he just keeps coming back."

Though she looked confused at the comparison, she seemed to take genuine comfort from his confidence, allowing him a moment of rare bravery, which he used to cautiously lay his hand on her shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze, which was shockingly well received. When he caught sight of the ambulances beginning to pull in, he gave her closer scrutiny, frowning at bruises that he'd somehow not noticed until then, and at the way she held a painfully swollen-looking right hand tight against her torso.

At the same time he registered that his ears were ringing obnoxiously, and he quite suddenly felt bruises of his own begin to make themselves known, inflicted by the dive they took to reach the minimal cover of the sign just before the explosion. All this in mind, he made an executive decision; he was, after all, Acting-Senior Field Agent until they found Tony, which they would... and _alive_, thank you very much. Screw the rates – Tony was a survivor, never a statistic.

If anything, he was always the enigma that baffled statisticians. Hell, aside from being the only twenty-first century survivor of the pneumonic plague, Tony literally held the records for survival of kidnappings, hostage situations, compromised stings, and botched undercover operations; other agents had come close... before, like normal people, their luck ran dry and they ended up either over the hill, or six feet under it. But not Tony – he was... well, Tony. It just wouldn't happen.

And if it ever did, Gibbs would be there to glare at him, slap him on the back of his head, and drag him back up to where he was suppose to be.

"Come on – we should both go get checked out," he said, using a little of the leftover bravery to lead her away from the wreckage and to the waiting paramedics. He would've been worried that she'd gone so easily, had he not been relieved that she hadn't broken his fingers for having the nerve (and just where _did_ that come from?) to press them into the small of her back to gently urge her forward.

McGee was woefully rejecting the stronger drugs that would surely flatten him and opting instead for downing a few generic painkillers for the wrenched shoulder and bruised ribs when he was joined at the curb by a still-pissed looking Gibbs, and a moment later Ziva, whose hand was wrapped tightly, the barely visible fingertips already purple and black beneath the swelling. Judging by the pinched look that had emerged now that the worst of her shock had left, the appendage was likely broken, in a few places, and it would seem she too had declined meds that would leave her unfit to remain on site for what was to come.

"Something wrong with your hand, David?" Gibbs asked, pointedly staring at the hand in question until Ziva slid it behind her back, out of sight.

"I am well, Gibbs," she replied stiffly, in a tone that clearly said that he'd better be ready to do far worse than a broken hand if he wanted to try and make her leave. His only response was a slight nod, and perhaps a flash of approval, before he moved right along.

"I just met with some of the boys on our IRT, and they're not happy about it, but I've got myself in place as Incident Commander, so we'll be directly involved with how things are handled for the duration."

"Boss, don't you have to be a first responder, and on the actual team to be Incident Commander?"

"Sure looks to me like I got here first..."

"But you're not -"

"...and I may be getting old, Special Agent McGee, but I'm pretty damn sure I remember heading Incident Response teams in the Corps during tours for longer than you've been an agent, and a hell of a longer than you've had that MIT degree of yours. Or do you think I would put myself in charge when any inexperience on my part would jeopardize whatever chance any possible survivors have of making it out alive?"

His tone bore a razor edge that made McGee flinch, looking appropriately contrite, but he continued before the younger man could muster up a stuttering apology.

"I'll be in unified command with the team's senior field engineer, and the fire department's search and rescue coordinator. Ziva, you've had experience with and response training for bombing sites – you'll be with me, helping sort out the procedures for this mess, especially with the rookies; I want no newbie mistakes getting in our way on this one." She nodded, and the last of any visible fear or pain vanished, her shoulders squaring readily under her appointed responsibilities. "McGee, what I want from you is details about the bomb threat – who called it in, when, and what happened between the time the threat was confirmed and detonation. But before that, I wanna know what it'll take to for a radio transmission, any electronic signal, to penetrate through large-scale debris."

McGee frowned, opening his mouth to voice his confusion, before Gibbs reached over and delivered a none-too-gentle tap to the side of his head, more specifically right over the ear that still held his earwig, and he remembered quite suddenly the raid they'd come back from just over half an hour ago; funny, how he found he couldn't even recall the details of the case, when it'd occupied their every waking moment for the last five days.

It took him a moment to realize the full implication of Gibbs' actions, and his eyes went wide.

"Because Tony still had his tack gear, mic and receiver on him before the explosion, and we might be able to get through to him?"

The patented 'No shit' look he got rolled right off him, his mind already launching into the science of radio waves, their strength versus the composition of the debris that would serve to obstruct them... then he realized Gibbs was still looking at him, and that there was something else he was missing, which just wasn't right. Of course, they had just narrowly escaped an explosion and collapse, and not unscathed, so he was willing to cut himself some slack.

When it finally did occur to him, however, he couldn't stop the rush of embarrassment that spread a bright flush across his face as he realized what it was that he'd briefly forgotten that Gibbs, of all people, had thought of first.

"...And because the GPS locator embedded in the equipment will help us to pinpoint his position for search and rescue, especially if he's... if he can't... if we can't reach him," he finished, stumbling around voicing the possibility, or rather likelihood that none of them were willing to touch with a fifty foot pole: that nothing they were doing or would do mattered – that Tony was already dead, and all they could recover was his body, all they could do would be to go to another funeral.

His only indication that he'd finally caught up was being released from the heat of that glare, which hadn't made him this uncomfortable since he'd first come on as the team's latest probie over three years ago. Without another word, Gibbs turned on his heal and stalked back to the pseudo command center that had been erected roughly a hundred feet from ground zero, Ziva walking dutifully at his side.

After they'd gone, McGee took a moment to feel exhausted, to be in pain, to watch the agents who'd made it out being led or carried away by paramedics and to feel angry that they were safe and sound and being cared for while Tony lay trapped beyond their reach... to resent Tony for doing this to them, no matter what reason he'd had for ignoring the danger, and going back inside. But as quickly as he allowed the torrent of emotions to wash over him, he forced them to subside, tucked them back into a corner in his thoughts, and turned the rest of his attention to the IRT's tech support vehicle as it pulled onto the property, stealing himself for the long haul.

He had work to do.

* * *

Had it not been for the watch on his wrist, he never would've known how much time had passed since he'd woken to find himself in this coffin-like prison of twisted steel above, intermingling with miscellaneous rubble around and bellow. Of course, it was a miracle unto itself that the thing had not only survived the final explosion's concussion, but also the finishing collapse – if he ever saw McGee again, he would totally be rubbing his face in this; never again would the little dweeb get to scoff at him for the thousand-plus price tag, or the website's claims of it being indestructible... kinda like him. He _was_ still alive, wasn't he? If only just...

As it was, he kept the gloating to himself, and stared at the display as he pushed his wrist up against a chunk of concrete to depress the button that illuminated it brightly: 9:00 PM. God, had it really only been an hour? It felt infinitely longer, every minute dragging by like ten, with unconsciousness stubbornly avoiding him, no matter how much he hurt.

Somewhere along the line, he'd managed with no small amount of tears and swearing to use his teeth to pull what was left of his sweater sleeve away from the last of its seam at his right shoulder, after which he shakily wrapped it tightly around the rod at the wound, and pressed down as hard as he could before he could have time to think about it. With no witnesses around, he'd let himself scream at the resulting agony, breathing in gasps and moans until his whited vision cleared once more and the pain returned to a more manageable level.

At the time he'd done it, he'd started shaking so badly he'd thought he was having a seizure, and he couldn't for the life of him remember what in the hell had made him think it was anything resembling a good idea, never mind necessary. Now, at the faintness that was cropping up in his already concussed head, he knew very well that it was likely the only thing that had kept him conscious this long, and might well be a deciding factor in whether or not he bled to death before help could arrive.

It seemed that the combination of the continued presence of the metal shaft, the dirt clogged into it, and the sleeve packed tightly against it had served to significantly slow the flow of blood, whose pool he could no longer feel expanding over him. So, apparently his luck hadn't entirely abandoned him, which was nice.

_Of course, is it 'luck' if all I'm doing is delaying the inevitable?... And just what happened to optimism, Tony? Stop whining and focus!_

He would've Gibbs-slapped himself on the back of the head if he didn't already hurt _everywhere_, so settled instead for biting the inside of his cheek, and flexing the hand pressed over the wound just enough for a quick zing of pain to bring his thoughts sharply back into perspective: a bomb had destroyed the building. He would be hard (_but not impossible, Tony_) to get to. He was alone (_thank God no one else had time to come back for me_), and badly injured, but for the moment relatively stable.

Gibbs, Ziva, and McGee had gotten out, he was sure of it – a flash of Ziva's angry, terrified face, screamed words he had no choice but to ignore... he blinked, and the moment was gone, his thoughts moving on, for lack of anything else to do.

Did he have anything he could use? Tony tried to remember what it was he'd still had on him before the alarms had started, if he'd kept anything that he could use now; there was the knife he kept strapped to his ankle, and he hadn't removed his holster, so he still had his .9 mm on his hip, trapped now between his body and the rubble, for all the good it would do him down here. The tack vest he'd donned was still zipped to its top, so that meant he had spare ammo (again, useless), a mini mag light (useful, but unnecessary with the most recent gas line to have caught a flame... which was all kinds of unsettling), the spare zip ties from the ones used in the mass arrest from earlier that evening (T_errific!... Now if only there was someone down here that I could arrest for this shit..._), and his spare shades, since he'd begun the costly and irritating habit of destroying the poor suckers while on duty.

All in all, there wasn't a whole lot he could do with any of it... except maybe being able to use the ridiculously expensive sun glasses to at least die in style. The thought of being dug out looking like a skewered Secret Service stooge made him snort... and then cough, grimace, curse, and move on.

Of course, when he realized in the next moment that he'd forgotten about the mic, earwig and receiver still wired to him through the apparently useless vest, he repeated the process, only in reverse, cursing his stupidity and poor memory so vehemently that the strain drew out a grimace and more coughing... then of course, more cursing, though noticeably and deliberately more quietly uttered while his body rode out the shock waves.

When at last he'd recovered, he realized he'd have to turn the receiver in his uppermost vest pocket on his right side back on, and shakily removed his right hand from the wound to do so, after which he achingly slowly reached up and pressed down the mic attached at his throat.

"_This is Sp... Special A... gent..._" His voice was immeasurably rough, like speaking with vocal cords made of sandpaper, and he did his best to clear it before continuing, though it wasn't much improved by the effort. "This is Special... Agent... Tony Di... Nozzo." He took a second just to breathe, amazed by how draining so few words could be. "Do you... read?...Can... anyone hear... me?... Is there anyone on... this... fr... frequency?"

Hope held out until he felt brave enough to try lifting his fingers from the comm to listen... and he was greeted by nothing but white noise in his ear. Disappointment lasted only a moment before he reminded himself that McGee would be out there working on this, along with the rest of the team, if Gibbs had anything to say about it (which he would, of course), so naturally he had nothing to worry about – this potential for communication was probably on their to-do list... likely right up there with finding out what the hell had gotten into him, to make him come back in when he certainly knew he could only have minutes to spare... a time limit that had turned out to be overly hopeful. At this point, he was as curious as they would be...

A frown of concentration had him squeezing his eyes shut, struggling to push past the blur of disoriented memories to those final moments: they were running through the lobby, racing for the doors...

..._almost there, almost there_...

...people fought to push past each other, panicking, desperate...

..._keep moving, there's no time_...

...fresh air, everyone running ahead, a flash of silver hair in the crowd... Ziva, angry, terrified, screaming... telling him to... move?...

..._run, run RUN_...

...Yes, to move, to get out... no time left... and then suddenly...

..._stop_.

This wasn't right... they'd forgotten something... or someone... who else was on shift tonight?... Ducky?... No, conference, Seattle... Palmer?... Gone with him, much to the man's obvious dismay...

...that only left...

Tony's blood ran cold, and he knew suddenly exactly what had made him turn away from his team, from the safety of the setting sun's light, to run back into a literal ticking time bomb, focused on nothing aside from the desperate need to get to the stairs, to get to a floor close to the basement, to a glass encased lab, to the sound-proof, cot-bearing room adjacent to it, to get to...

A high-pitched moan, distinctly feminine, and almost recognizable sounded from somewhere beyond his cage, filled with such pain as to dwarf any felt from within his own body.

..._Abby._


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** So, as it turns out, the grand equalizer of the universe seems to have something against me. This chapter was in fact written and ready to be posted a week and a half ago. For once, I'd managed to beat back the Procrastination beast with a stick, and I was SO proud.

And I've been in a power struggle with my "Document Manager" ever since. It would not let me upload anything longer than two paragraphs. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why. I've spent the last week and a half cussing and fussing with the damn thing, uploading six pages, having only a teeny tiny little portion of it show up... I won't lie – my head was very near exploding. I think for sure I've ruptured a vein somewhere...

And then, wonders never cease, it woke up today and said, 'Let there be posting!'

And there was. No cause, no explanation... and you damn well better believe no further complaints on my part – didn't wanna jinx it, now that it's working. :P

Ironically, the poll that I posted on the last chapter pretty much came back with a unanimous landslide: faster updates, shorter don't matter. Heh. Rest assured, I intend to honor that feedback... whenever my mutinying DM allows for it, of course.

But, enough rambling. Thanks to all who have read and reviewed thus far, and, as always, to the colony of silent lurkers – the number of people interested in this fic has been an awesome surprise. Thanks guys, you all rock :)

...of course, if the itch to review does pop up eventually, you have my unconditional support in scratching it.

:)

* * *

For a long moment, he lay frozen and silent, overwhelmed by his revelation while simultaneously wishing desperately that this was nothing more than a nightmare as the sound of that moan ricocheted around in his head. In the next moment, he wondered briefly if he was actually dead, and this was his own personal hell; a woman he loved like a prized little sister, whose uneven, crackling breaths he could hear with agonizing clarity, lay trapped, maybe dying, little more than twenty feet away and he could do nothing – he was pinned in place, utterly helpless to get to her without a steel-cutting power saw, a blood transfusion, and a Godzilla-sized pain threshold. Hell, he'd even do without the last two, if he could just get free...

But he couldn't. All there was, was to listen – listen to her choke and gasp and cry. And _do nothing_.

Gritting his teeth against the urge to scream at the injustice of it, he forced himself to be calm, knowing anger, though justified, would get him nowhere fast; he could scream and curse himself hoarse, and he'd still be just as stuck, just as helpless.

_'Don't think, just talk... words you usually live by, DiNozzo,_' his internal Gibbs reminded him, and he couldn't help but huff an agreement... before realizing that he was, in a fact, responding to a point made by a voice in his head, and that if he lived to and wanted to pass his next annual qualifier for field duty, he'd better keep those kinds of strangely two-way conversations strictly _in_ his head.

"Abby?" he called, just loud enough to be heard over the creaking of metal and crackling of flames, but quiet enough as well to not send himself into another coughing fit; the last thing he wanted to do right then was to pass out and leave her completely alone in this pit.

When there was no answer except the audible struggle for control equal measures over pain and fear, he braced himself, and called a little louder. "Abbs? Can... can you hear... me? It's T... Tony." He had to stop there, biting his lip against pain from the effort, as well as the blooming, itching ache threatening in his lungs. _Damned dust._ He didn't take more than a few seconds, however, knowing that he needed to get through to her, for both their sakes. "List...en... to me Abby... please – you... you have to calm... down... slow... breaths, deep... as you can. It'll... it'll... help..."

Stopping again, eyes watering as the urge to cough stubbornly persisted, and worsened, he again cursed his current uselessness. If there was a way for him to get free and make his way over to her, he could hold her, coach her through it, smile and tell her everything would be fine, that they'd be outta there before she knew it. Really, if he had her to convince, he might just believe it himself.

After a seeming eternity of fighting against it, the twisting urge subsided, at least for the moment, and a spark of relief lit in his chest when he heard the ragged breaths off to his left catch for a second, and then resume with a deliberate, hard-won slowness. While still sounding difficult, they sounded far less frantic and he knew it would be far less painful with what was likely a damaged rib cage and lungs. Refusing to dwell on the possibility of punctures and internal bleeding, he held on to that spark, drawing strength from what little he could do with half-shouted words.

"Good girl... Abbs, keep it up... you're do... doing fine."

He took a moment to think of the best way to paint their current picture for her, not necessarily with the aim to lie outright, but more so keeping in mind that setting up a bit of a rose-tinted view of the deep shit they were in would go a long way towards keeping them calm and optimistic, two important keys to giving a rescue time to arrive.

"So... here's what's... what: I... I can see outside... from... my spot, so it shouldn't... shouldn't be take too... long... to dig us... out." Pause for breath, curse the dust. "I've still got my... gear... from the raid, and I'll... keep on... trying... the radio, 'till McGee wor... works his magic, 'nd I g... get through..."

A barking cough burst out of him before he could contain it, and he bit his lip bloody to keep in the cry that almost followed it; didn't want to scare the poor girl even more than she already had to be. As soon as his breath was caught, he forced himself to keep talking, this time consciously dedicating half his attention towards cough-watch/repressing.

"I know... what you're thinking: no way... does any... radio signal get thr... through this m...mess, but I say... don't underestimate... McGeek. He'll... find a way. Always does... 'course, with your... help, 'lot of the t... time, but... still... kid's got skills..."

Luckily keeping up a steady stream of rambling came naturally, from long years spent growing up in the mother of all UN-fun houses, to even longer years spent leap-frogging from city to city, and one kill-me-now stakeout after another. Tony DiNozzo was armed, and ready.

And so, with hours, days, even _weeks _of babble at his disposal, Tony kept the silence at bay, only pausing every few minutes long enough to listen closely to Abby's breathing, and to see if she might be able, or trying, to speak to him yet before rolling right along. Homicide cop stories, bad jokes, even worse "philosophical" side-bars... even an in-depth critique of the original 'War of the Worlds', where the aliens had suction cuppies on their long bony digits, and sounded like ET when they got startled by the shrieking of Ms. Ann Robinson. On that subject, he solemnly pointed out that "ET probably shouldn't have been trying to feel her up in a basement in the middle of an invasion, 'cause really, what does that say about the universal priorities of males?", and then imagined Abby's equally solemn nod of agreement before soldering on.

Every now and then, he checked his watch in between monologuing, and watched as first twenty, then thirty, then fifty minutes rolled by, and by the time it was passing hour two since having woken up, Tony came to realize two rather important things: first, and perhaps not quite as happy in the news department, was that with all the talking and resulting coughing that had had him moving more than was probably wise, he could feel fresh blood beginning to soak through the material pressed over the wound, and the lower half of his body was unsettlingly colder than it had been an hour ago.

Not good... all kinds of bad, in fact. But, a worry best saved for if and when there was actually a stellar trip to the ER to be had.

Second, and most importantly, a faint intermittent static break that he had been ignoring for the past hour seemed to have gotten gradually louder, and now that he'd stopped talking longer than a few seconds, his heart almost beat out of his chest when he realized that behind all the static, the tiniest hint of a voice was poking through.

_Holy freakin' shit... no way... _

Using the hand that wasn't slowly becoming freshly saturated (_Don't think about it, don't think about it – more important shit happening right now!_), Tony fumbled with the frequency adjuster, praying that he wasn't counteracting whatever measures they were taking out there, and letting out a foolishly exuberant whoop (_...God, __**ouch**__..._) when the voice suddenly came through sparklingly loud and clear.

"_Tony? Tony can you hear me? It's McGee... Tony, if you can read me on this frequency, please, respond._"

* * *

It had been almost two hours since they'd picked themselves up from escaping the blast – an hour and a half of working and planning, and firmly avoiding feeling _any_ of the sickness-inducing, gut-tearing, hair-pulling, all-aboard-next-stop-panic-attack fear that lurked around the outskirts of their every action and thought, just waiting for them to let their guard down. Since taking up unified command with the other emergency worker's divisions, Gibbs had helped organize and disperse the fleets of firefighters and coordinate the teams for searching out any remnants of the explosive devise or any tertiary device that may still be on the premises, having simply failed to detonate with the first two to complete the destruction.

Ziva... well, despite efforts put towards not worriedly keeping track of his team, McGee was nothing short of in awe at seeing the Ex-Mossad agent at work in one of the roles from her original element, which of course led to multitasking to allow for scattered observations.

The pain from her hand blithely disregarded, Ziva had been dividing her time between aiding the bomb experts in their search for the possible third device, lending her eerie knowledge of possible locations and camouflages, and collaborating with the disaster-site field engineers on supports to be set up, given the scope and type of the explosions, and measures to follow when excavating, given the possibility of said unconfirmed device, or devices, laying hidden in the rubble.

She moved with a combination of rigid professionalism, and the inherent grace that had lent to her success as an assassin, her voice calm, commanding, unyielding, her face carved of stone – immobile, and just as impassive, with only the odd flicker of shadow that disappeared too quickly for anyone to take notice... except for McGee, who recognized it for what it was, having seen it on Gibbs' face whenever the Marine passed by, and having felt the very same thing sitting heavily in his chest and manifesting in the slight shake of hands that flew over the keyboards and switchboards at his disposal.

McGee had long since shoved aside the techs who'd accompanied the equipment, almost literally growling in a way that would do Gibbs proud whenever they'd tried to reclaim their places; they'd worked too damn slow, and done most of it wrong anyway. In an effort to give the stuttering duo something productive to do, he'd delegated for the moment the task of hunting down the specifics needed on the original reported threat, though he was fully expecting having to redo it himself, given the way they'd stumbled around after piling out of the van, looking wide-eyed, shell shocked, and dizzy at the aftermath of an attack they hadn't even been caught in the middle of.

Damned probies, even greener than he'd ever been, he was sure.

Without them in the way, trying the obvious and worthless solutions that even a high school grad would know hadn't a snowball's chance in Hell of working, he'd made _some_ progress... but not enough. Not nearly enough, and it was all he could do to keep focused around his own frustration.

He'd known from the word 'go' that it would be far from easy, but he'd also counted Tony's GPS locator being accessible from an outside computer. It wasn't. Abby, recently expressing concerns about "bad guys getting Tech Wise", and evidently testing one of her latest creations, seemed to have made the signals in their newest units impenetrable to any system except hers, and the hand-held device linked to it that had been left in the possession of their back up unit, up until their return to HQ, where it was returned to Abby's lab... which was now buried under the rest of the building.

When next they spoke, he wasn't sure whether he would be speaking through admiration or resentment when he asked just how in the world she had managed to encrypt, disguise, and flat out phantomise the friggin' thing. It was like it wasn't even there – didn't exist, never had.

_And it was going to drive him insane._

After that had proved to be such a complete and jaw-dropping dead end, he'd left the decryption program and scanner running, and turned all his energy to the part of the plan for connecting with Tony that was originally thought to be the impossible one... and he was fighting tooth and nail to make this possible.

The first and only plan of attack had been to find a way to boost the broadcasting and receiving capabilities of his own radio set from the raid, essentially plugging the thing into the system he'd been given, and using it's power to fuel the small device's strength. With it's usual capacity being only a little less than five hundred megahertz, trying to more than double that had taken far more finesse and trouble-shooting and rerouting than he'd had the patience for, but he'd thrown himself into it, knowing that he couldn't go to Gibbs with anything less than a solution, swearing to himself that he wouldn't leave that seat until Tony's voice was coming through on those speakers.

And now, an hour and fifty minutes later, he'd reached the end of the line – he'd boosted, and fortified and rerouted and cajoled every single megahertz he possibly could into a device never meant to be filtering through that kind of signal strength, and now was praying to every deity known to man that it held up under the strain for its trial by fire: McGee would run it through one frequency after another, one tenth of a hertz at a time if he had to, with enough signal strength to broadcast to the space station, in hopes that Tony was conscious, lucid, and mobile enough to be able to answer back when he hit the right one.

With some debate as to what phrase he could stand to repeat dozens of times, McGee took a deep breath, adjusted the dial to the first frequency on the list, and hit the button to broadcast.

"Tony, it's McGee. If you can read me on this frequency, please respond."

A short pause, and he released the switch to hear... static. He sighed, knowing that he shouldn't feel as disappointed as he did, that this was probably a process that would drag a lot longer than his fraying calm could handle, and reminding himself that he _had_ to handle it before he depressed the switch and repeated his message. Static was, again, his only answer. He broadcasted a third and final time, and then tuned to the next frequency, deciding to give each one three attempts, and to rotate back through the list once he'd reached the end... provided the building, which he could hear groaning and creaking with ominous promise, hadn't gone ahead and finished collapsing by the time he reached that point.

It was halfway through his list, his third try on this frequency, and headlong into losing hope, that the most unexpected, unanticipated, shocking thing happened: he got an answer back.

"Tony? Tony can you hear me? It's McGee... Tony, if you can read me on this frequency, please, respond." Said tiredly, but with a plea that rang sourly and bitingly in his ears, practically mocking him.

But then...

"_Can you hear... me?_" McGee actually stopped breathing, the air catching, and lodging in his throat, and he wondered for a second if he'd only imagined the break in the stream of answering static, the whispered words from someone who couldn't possibly have survived, couldn't possibly be talking -

"Tony? Is that you?" Something that sounded like a mixture of a laugh and a cough rang through, and McGee let himself breathe again.

"_Who... the hell else... Probie? That bomb... blow out your ear...drums? Pretty sure... you weren't... deaf... before._" He'd never been so happy to be mocked in his life.

With a wild grin, he jumped up from his station, doing a quick scan of the bustling crowd, and spotting both Gibbs and Ziva hovering over a paper-covered table at the command post. Refusing to leave the equipment unattended, for fear of what the Terrible Two could screw up in his absence, he cupped his hands around his mouth and drew enough breath to fill his chest, determined to be heard over the cacophony of noise between him and the rest of the team.

"I've got him! I've got Tony on the radio!"

The bellow certainly did the trick, and then some, as nearly every head turned in his direction, and his two teammates promptly discarded whatever conversation they'd been involved in to sprint over to his side. A surprising number of people not occupied in any immediate action followed on their heals, squeezing in under the tent that had been pitched overhead as shelter from the drizzling rain that had begun in the last hour. It occurred to him then that every man and woman there had been operating under the assumption that while survivors were always hoped and searched for, one look at this building had had each of them expecting to rescue nothing but corpses from the ruins. Only now that he had solid proof Tony was, at least for the moment, alive did he allow himself to shudder at how likely it had been that he would never find anything but static, dead air.

"McGee! What do I hit to broadcast?"

McGee jumped a little, having completely missed Gibbs' question the first time round by the sound of it, and quickly sat back down, shifted his chair a little to the side to allow Gibbs access to the mic, and pressed down on the necessary button. He wasn't sure whether to feel shocked, or to avert his eyes when he saw his boss, NCIS's Man of Steel, actually need to take a moment to stop, breathe, and collect himself before speaking.

"DiNozzo, what's your status?"

"_Boss..._" There was something unnameable in the way Tony breathed the word, a perplexing and worrying combination of relief... and pain. Looking to Gibbs, McGee could tell by the way his jaw muscle clenched that he'd heard it too, and didn't like what it implied, though he kept it out of his voice as he spoke again.

"What's your status?" he repeated, then his tone softened. "How bad are ya hurt, Tony?"

A wavering exhale set them on edge, his simple answer only worsening it. "_Bad... enough._" When a long silence followed, Gibbs gripped the edge of the table hard.

"Care to elaborate on that?" he asked with measured calm. There was another pause, and Gibbs tried to brace himself, knowing the other two were doing the same. It didn't work.

"_I'm... uh... I'm... pinned, Boss. Steel rod... sticking... out from a concrete slab... above... me. Stomach. Far right. Don't think it... got... all the way through... but I can't mo... can't... move._" The beginning of a loud cough sounded over the air before Tony released his button, the painful sound making them cringe. When he came back, he sounded out of breath, his words carefully and deliberately soft and slow. "_Sorry... Boss. Dust 'n crap... messing... with my... lungs._"

"The bleeding?" Gibbs got out through gritted teeth, his imagination painting a vivid picture from his senior field agent's words and voice that left his stomach churning.

"_Had it... stopped. Looks like... 'ts started... again._" Gibbs muttered a swear under his breath at that; he didn't need Ducky here to tell him how much an injury like Tony's bled in the first place, internally as well as externally, but if it'd started again... then their time just got cut in half, from an already shrinking window. Gibbs swore again, but reigned it in before McGee pressed their button down, the gray-faced expression he wore matching what he felt.

"Where were you when the last bomb blew?" he demanded, resisting asking the question the burned in the back of his mind for now. Like he'd told McGee, that would wait until Tony was on the mend... and _then_ Gibbs could tear him a new one.

"_Just in front... of the stairs... entrance... um... East end of the... lobby... think... think I fell straight... down... not all... the way... to the basement, though._" Looking back at the couple of engineers in the group, he nodded at the gestured time frame, trying to take at least some comfort from it, even though it still felt too damn long.

"Alright DiNozzo, just sit tight – we've already started in on the building, and these guys are saying that they could get down to you in as little as two hours, barring any unforeseen complications. Think you can hang on 'till then?" he asked with deliberate lightness, hoping the normalcy would help. It seemed to for a moment.

"_Yeah, Boss... not goin'... nowhere,_" he said, but then suddenly a loud gasp traveled over the radio waves, and Gibbs was immediately on edge.

"What is it? Tony, what's wrong?" The rambling that answered struck him with cold fear.

"_Concussion... gotta be... from the concussion... sonofabitch, can't believe... I almost... didn't tell you... fucking... concussion... blood loss... maybe... no, not... not enough, no 'xcuse... can't believe... Gibbs... I'm not alone... down here..._"

Gibbs immediately straightened, elated at the news, while even more unnerved by the stream of thought self-reprimand, not liking at all the way his agent's mind worked, but setting that aside to handle once Tony had lived to fight another day. "It's all right, it's fine, just tell me how many are with you – can you see them? What kind of injuries are we looking at here?"

An exhale that sounded painfully close to a sob sent the team's hearts racing, but it could not compare to what followed.

"_One Gibbs, only... only one... can't see her, but... can hear... her breathing's not... not right..._" A shuddering intake of breath, then,"_...it's Abby..._"

Watching the previously restrained mix of agony and fire in Gibbs' eyes double, turning cool blue into razor edged ice, and the way that both hands practically seized into white-knuckled fists that fairly shook with rage at his sides, McGee couldn't feel ashamed at thinking, for the briefest of moments, that he was envious of Tony for being tucked away out of range of the wrath that looked on the verge of being unleashed.

Then a knife twisted in his stomach as his brain caught up with what he'd just heard, and he couldn't hold in a quiet moan.

He'd thought he'd been close to losing it before...

...but the night, it seemed, was only just beginning.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Well, this one fought me a little on the way through, but here it is, for your reading pleasure :)

As always, a boatload of thanks goes out to the readers and reviewers, and to the quietly loyal silent lurkers... and a special shout-out goes to those of the silent lurkers (or, as some may know them, the CSL... xP) who have come forth to generously speak their piece.

You folks are the stuff legends are made of. :)

x

* * *

The ensuing silence was a lit fuse, Gibbs' words the spark of light slithering their way down the coil.

"I asked you to see to it that she left, that she went home... she was sick, she was supposed to be gone before we got back." The look on Gibbs' face was like nothing Ziva had seen, his voice as close to breaking as it had ever been, his control over the brewing storm resting on the edge of a knife. And she knew that Tony could hear all of what she was seeing from the agony that came through in his answer.

"_She was going... Boss... she was... going home, but she looked... so... awful, I... I told her to nap in... her lab... I was going to b... bring her back... to my place... after..._"

"She _should have_ been _gone_, she should have been _safe_. You shouldn't have let her stay... she was _your responsibility_." The words were biting, spat out through clenched teeth. His fists convulsed at his sides, and he slammed them down on the table, making both McGee and the equipment jump. "God _damn it_, Tony!"

"_I... I'm... sorry... Jesus... I'm sorry..._"

They could hear his breaths, ragged from strain and from wounds that seemed for the moment to have been forgotten by the team lead, and Ziva felt her heart clench under a flash of white hot anger at the very real danger that this discussion was only deteriorating Tony's ability to cope with it all. And she refused to simply stand by and listen to it happen, to listen as he was made to suffer even more for the choice that had painted on the horror she'd seen on his face the moment he'd realized the looming tragedy, that had led her partner to run back inside when he had to have known he couldn't possibly reach Abby and get back out in time.

Without stopping to consider any of the long-term consequences, she forced herself between Gibbs and the table, signaling an equal-parts fearful and awed McGee against pressing the button. By this point, the lingering rescue staff had wisely returned to their duties, giving the team the privacy that the discussion clearly warranted.

"That is _enough_," she hissed, eyes flashing as she met Gibbs' furious ones. "This will not help him – you are making it worse, tormenting him with a failure that was unintentional and cannot be reversed. Abby's life in on the line, yes, but Tony's is as well, and you may well tip the scale against him. I should not need to remind you that in his condition, in this situation, additional stress can lead to shock, and while he remains out of our reach, shock can and will kill him." She continued to meet him head on, her anger undeterred even as she watched his own begin to calm. "You will not speak to him unless you are able to demonstrate the proper restraint. Do you understand?"

With eyes narrowed at her gal, but softened in the slightest at the well-deserved rebuke, he nodded stiffly in understanding, and she stepped aside, still seething but reigning it in as McGee, without needing the order, pressed the button down. Gibbs considered his words carefully, filtering through all those fighting to be said, and leaving himself only with those safely outside the blame itching to be assigned.

"We're coming, for the both of you. Just... keep talking to her, keep her with you."

He paused for a moment, letting the image his mind had conjured of his senior field agent, his friend, fill him: hurt, alone, having been ready to die trying to save the very person Gibbs had all but accused him of condemning. Though he would never admit it out loud, and hated to admit it even to himself, Ziva had been right, but he couldn't take back what he'd said, wasn't sure he'd have the strength to try even if he could, so he moved on, hoping any damage done wasn't as lasting as a part of him feared it would be.

"We'll radio every so often with updates on progress. Let her know that she'll be home soon, and hang tough, DiNozzo. We will. Not. Let. You. Down. Got it?"

The silence from the other line stretched for so long that they thought worriedly for a moment that he had passed out. When finally an answer came, they wondered whether the silence was actually worse.

"_...Understood. Will radio... any changes... and await further... contact. Over... and out._" The statement was brusque, professional, and deceivingly unshakable.

Everything Tony had built through a lifetime of practice to hide behind; hurt the man enough, and Tony curled away, leaving behind only Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, long-time fielder of all kicks delivered when he was down, and the version that took over when the man that was their friend knew no other way, for whatever given moment, to keep himself in one piece.

Gibbs bristled at the sharp knowledge that this time it had been of his doing, but firmly reminded himself that what he had to do now was throw everything he had into the coming hours, make this mess end right for those caught up in it, and then sort out his screw ups the way the two of them usually handled things between them: over a night of pizza, largely too much Bourbon, and a pile of movies he'd never heard of. It'd worked for other big-ticket items in the near and distant past, like during and post-fallout from his Mexico hiatus, and for the fiasco with Jeanne and daddy dearest – it would work here. He would make sure of it... he just needed to get his people back.

It was that small comfort that he took with him when he ordered McGee to keep up steady check-ins with Tony, and strode back to the command post, figuring Ziva held her job in high enough regard to follow in spite of the anger continuing to smolder silently in his direction, and quietly satisfied to not be disappointed. They relayed their new and confirmed standing survivor count, plotted their closest and most viable plan of entry, and then there was nothing else but for them to do but get all the machinery and equipment in place, and start digging.

And damn well hope that they were as fast as they needed to be.

* * *

He ended the transmission numb and expressionless, blinking back the tears that threatened with no more than a passing thought of irritation to lay silent and still, absorbed in the separate breathing rhythms that traveled through the air in the small area. For the moment, he was happy to simply keep his mind empty of any and all thoughts pertaining to pesky emotions that he knew would do him no good in his circumstances, taking instead to refreshing his observations of his surroundings.

There was an almost disconnected feeling to it this time as he took it all in with a clinical eye, as though he were investigating the scene that was possibly to be some other poor bastard's impromptu grave, cataloging the environment to figure out exactly what these final hours would be like from an outsider's perspective: drifting clouds of concrete dust and dirt and ash, thick enough at some points to be both suffocating and blinding, having yet to settle with the magnitude of the explosion and collapse, and the continued shifting of what was left of the building; rubble ranging from the size of mere pebbles to chunks and slabs as large as sports cars (_like the one above me, with the steel... Stop – useless fact, with no bearing on the condition of the environment; can't use it, can't change it – move along_), with the odd bit of wood and material from desks and chairs from the higher floors scattered throughout the piles; bits and shards of shattered glass sparked periodically throughout by the light of the fires, whose number and proximity were gradually heating the relatively closed in space, but luckily were not near enough to his position to pose any immediate threat of burning...

A sudden jolt cut through his disconnected state at the unwanted thought of how close the fires might well be to Abby, until he was assaulted by a far more sickening thought: if the fires had reached her, he would know. He would _hear_.

He gagged and shook, and fought to return to his mindless processing, but the damage had been done – the thought of Abby and of what might happen to her while he was unable to reach her brought his thoughts crashing back to the radio transmission. When he'd first heard McGee's voice, it had allowed him the first shred of hope he'd felt since regaining consciousness to find himself pinned like a goddamned butterfly; he'd had flashes of an impossible rescue made possible by the sheer fact that Gibbs and the team were behind it, had actually imagined with a startling amount of fondness the ambulance ride to the hospital, and the days of nurse-watching and complaining that would ensue.

Then had come time to admit to his screw up, to admit to the mistake that he would regret more than any other in his long list for however long remained of his life, and even though he'd expected the anger, and knew that he deserved it and the blame, it had hurt like he never would've believed possible to hear it from Gibbs, to know how profoundly he had failed to live up to the trust the Marine had always, and somewhat inexplicably, put in him.

_...she should have been safe..._

_...she was your responsibility..._

The words, like a knife to the chest then, were now akin to acid, searing and corroding the longer he thought of them and he could do nothing to shut them out, to shut them up... or to deny their truth; Abby _had_ been his responsibility – she'd been sick, exhausted, and had he just done as he was _fucking told_ rather than going with the inclination to play nursemaid, he would've paid for a cab to take her home where she'd have been well and truly out of harm's way.

He was the reason she could die, might already be dying... and he would never forgive himself for it.

_God, what've I done?_

Had his heart not been in the process of breaking, he might've laughed at that thought, which he was absolutely positive was a quote from at least a dozen rip-off sci-fi/horror flicks. As it was, it took everything he had not to give in to the earlier urge to scream, the hand over his wound flexing and pressing down rhythmically, and he was left shaking both from the effort as well as the welcomed shock-wave of pain, glad for its temporary relief from the memory of Gibbs' damning words.

Of course, they were still waiting for him when the pain once more subsided to a dull roar and he surfaced from its drowning properties, and he growled at himself to grit his teeth and deal with it, to not let it bear down on him. After all, as easy as it would be to lose himself to the guilt that his already weakened defenses and energy stores were ill-equipped to shoulder, he had every intention of following Gibbs' newest orders to the letter; he would keep talking to her, keep her aware and with him as well as he could, even if he had to cough and stumble his way through it... he'd damn well talk until he passed out if that's what it took, then he'd wake up and keep on going.

He was Tony DiNozzo – talking was what he did.

"Well, just got off... the horn... with McGenius – told you he'd... figure it... out... by the way – and Gibbs, and... they wanted... me to pass a... along kisses, well wishes... and the... happy news that they... were almost done... working... stuff out up... top, and they're on... on their way... pretty soon."

The distant muffled sounds of machinery beginning its work just barely reached his ears, and he half-smiled to hear it, managing to inject a healthy dollop of audible grin into his voice.

"Abs... you hear... that? They've started... to dig... they're coming, we'll... be... home in no... time." Maybe not the lie for false hope that that had started out as?

_Well, stranger things have happened._

With a wider smile, he picked up where his previous monologue had left off, or rather as close as he could figure given its concussed aimlessness, practically counting the minutes as they passed and all the while listening as the sounds of the excavating crew drew closer at an achingly slow pace. Every fifteen minutes or so, McGee's voice would burst into life in his ear, sending a spike through his head to remind him his headache hadn't gone away, and he would listen to Probie's rambling play-by-play about surface activities, assure him that they were both still (for the moment) alive, and end the transmission before the noise could make his head implode.

As before, he kept up his monitoring of the sounds of her breaths, struggling to keep his voice calm whenever he had to coach and coax her out of panic or pain-induced gasping, and keeping in DiNozzo tradition for topic choice. Eventually, he even got around to the Spring Break he'd spent in Panama City, where he'd stumbled upon Kate's picture on the Wet T-Shirt Contest Wall of Fame, and the mutual blackmail that had ensued.

It occurred to him for a foolish moment that Kate was going to kill him when she found out he'd spilled the beans on her 'clean as a whistle', good Catholic girl image, then he reminded himself bluntly that Kate was dead and as such likely wouldn't care, and then promptly changed topics.

Somewhere along the line, he'd begun shivering, peripherally aware that despite the flames scattered around him and the heat they expelled, he was getting colder, almost freezing, but his mind, which was a whirlwind of thought processes on a _good_ day, couldn't hold onto such things in the midst of everything else and so let these pertinent facts slip away to dissolve.

And if he was starting to slur a few of his words together, stumble over them more than he had before, or sometimes forget what he'd been saying in the middle of a sentence, it didn't really matter, did it? It would be okay, as long as he kept talking, kept Abby with him – even if she didn't answer, her constant breaths and the thrill of warmth he felt whenever he made a particularly ridiculous joke and his ears just managed to catch a huffing wisp of a laugh were all that counted, and all he needed to dig deep into his babble-well and keep up the stream of words.

He wouldn't screw this one up, wouldn't give his boss any more of a reason to be disappointed in him, maybe even hate him. He wasn't at all sure he could survive another conversation like that intact... the shame and the guilt were still threatening to do him in from the first one.

_...she was your responsibility..._

_I know, Boss, I'm trying harder this time..._

"_Tony?_"

McGee's voice was like a gunshot in his ear, and he jerked, releasing a low groan for all involved pains before raising a curiously clumsy hand to his comm.

"Mc...Gee...?" He frowned at his sluggish pronunciation, wondering when it had started for a moment before shrugging off the question in favor of keeping up with whatever the younger agent was trying to say to him.

"_I, uh, wanted to let you know why the digging was stopped..._" The kid sounded worried, but Tony was too busy wondering how he'd managed to miss the fact that he couldn't hear the sounds of machinery any more to think much of it. When Tony didn't answer, McGee kept going, sounding even more worried than before, though obviously trying hard to hide it. "_The crews had to pull back because they hit a pretty big collection of gas lines and piping, and couldn't risk cutting through it all._"

Tony fought to grasp what he was being told, surprised to find how hard it was to take in anything outside the bubble his stream of stories and pointless anecdotes had created. "They... stopped, as in... can't... won't be able t... to..."

"_They're not going to stop digging period_," came the hurried reassurance, which managed to quell at least some of his rising dread and confusion. "_The bulk of the crew has relocated to a new chunk of the site to try coming in from a less obstructed angle, but Gibbs insisted on keeping on the original site with a few of the engineers, and they're going to try working their way around the obstructions to get down the rest of the way to you guys on their own._"

"Oh... 's that... safe?"

_Dumb question to ask, DiNozzo – of course it's not. They're risking their asses to save yours, or... Abby's... mine's a bonus... That's even dumber. Stop being hormonal about this, and get back to listening – the kid's talking again._

"_Yeah, they're... they're being pretty careful about it_," McGee said, obviously a little reluctant on going into details he probably thought would upset him. "_They've got safety lines, and safety lines for their safety lines, plus Ziva's working with them over the radio as they go_." A quick snort came over the line. "_Don't think anyone wants to ask her where she learned most of what she knows._"

Tony's lips pulled into a smile at the image of their nervousness around the Israeli. "Yeah... I wouldn't... if I were... them."

There was a long pause then, and Tony should have realized what the younger agent was building up to saying, but he would blame it on the beating his head took that he didn't see it coming.

"_Tony... what Gibbs said earlier... I know he didn't mean -_"

"Don't," Tony interrupted flatly. His hand flexed of its own accord over the wound, as though it had by now learned the habit of using the pain as a distraction, as grounding in a sea of uncertainty and a mess of emotions that he just couldn't handle right now.

But the guy, once so meek a kitten could take him on, had apparently spent the last three years growing a spine in the face of Tony's badgering, and tried again.

"_You can't blame yourself, Tony, you couldn't have known..._"

"I... said... _don't_!"

The outburst cost him, and everything locked in place as fresh lungfuls of dust dragged him into a harsh coughing spree that left his head spinning, the world pitching and tilting under him while the muscles and tissues around the rod stretched and contracted in a swirl of agony that stole what little breath he was able to pull into his vice-tightened chest. It was almost two full minutes before he was allowed to sag back into his bed of debris, exhausted, and wondering if McGee had had to listen to that whole debacle. He hoped not.

Then...

"_Tony?_" Well, so much for that hope.

Tony couldn't help a grimace, both at the coppery taste in the back of his mouth that he swallowed without letting himself dwell on, as well as McGee's voice, made so quiet from the fear he couldn't quite hide any more that it was halfway to a whisper.

"I'm... okay... Probie... just tired... of this... shit." He knew he sounded it too, and wished he had the energy to make light of this. As it was, he was using everything he had just to keep his eyes open and his other hand still pressed over the wound, for all the good it was doing; he had to have torn it open even more, with that last episode being as rough as it was. Sure as hell felt like he had.

There was a reluctant sigh as McGee decided not to call him on just how not 'okay' he'd sounded. "_Just... just hang in there, Tony. Gibbs'll be down there soon, he'll get you guys out._"

"I know."

"_You do believe it, don't you?_"

It was Tony's turn to sigh. "Yeah... Probie... I do." And he did. Because Gibbs had said so himself, and he always did what he said he'd do.

Whether or not he may be planning to later on kill one of the two people he was aiming to save... well, that was another point all together.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** I was going back through the previous chapters to double check for mistakes I may have missed, when I caught this one in Chapter 3: "McGee jumped a little, having completely missed Gibbs' question the first time round by the sound of it, and quickly sat back down, rolled a little to the side to allow Gibbs access to the mic, and pressed down on the necessary button."

At first glance, this sentence is fine... until you read it again, see the part about McGee 'rolling' out of Gibbs' way, and realize that it would be quite odd for the IRT for NCIS to bring a rolley chair for use by emergency personnel on a bomb site. Huh. Maybe I'll fix that later. In the meantime, the story continues... and McGee will have a far more appropriate folding chair from now on :)

As always, thanks to the readers and reviewers and the CSL, whose collective interest in this piece has managed to far surpass my previous personal best for the number of 'Alerts' put on a story of mine: 151 and counting now... you guys make me so happy inside :P

And as for why I've taken an intolerably long time to update... well, started out with buggering up my writing schedule, then getting sidetracked by my NCIS oneshot "Ferreum", and then stalling an unforgivably long time... but, that doesn't excuse it. Long story short: you guys rock, my capacity for deadlines sucks, and, well... I'm trying to improve on that. Don't go giving up on me! o_o

Meantime, on with the chapter – hope it was at least a little worth the wait! And while this one is a bit of a filler, the next one I guarantee will knock your socks off... and, I'm happy to report, already has 3 of its pages written and will be up within the next few days... my way of looking for you guys' forgiveness xP – Enjoy!

* * *

After finishing up his transmission with Tony this last time, McGee slumped back into his chair, not at all sure what to take from the brief exchange. Really, Tony hadn't given many appealing options: there was the slow, soft, almost murmuring way he'd had of speaking at first, disconnected and weakening by the minute from God-only-knew how much bleeding, from the steel rod pinning him and any other injuries he may not have yet told them about.

Aside from that, there was the somewhat less life-threatening, but no less worrying way he'd refused to let McGee alleviate any of the blame Gibbs had wrongly lashed out at him with, and of course the lung-wrecking coughs that had left McGee shaking just from listening to them. He'd half expected to not get an answer when he said Tony's name after they'd stopped... no one could sound like that and not already have one foot out the door. Except, evidently, Tony.

Of course, he could just be managing to sound exceptionally lucid for a dying man... it wouldn't be the first time.

A hard shake of his head promptly cleared that thought away, and he sat staring at the radio for a long moment, contemplating checking in with Tony after only having just finished with him simply to reassure himself that, sounding like he had, his friend hadn't gone and died on him in the minutes since he'd last spoken. Able to resist only by reminding himself that they really couldn't afford the waste of any of the power left in Tony's equipment, or additional strain on their own, he instead pushed his chair back from the table and started towards the command post, and Ziva.

Unsurprisingly, she hadn't moved from where he'd last found her: as close to the edge of the rubble as she could reasonably get without a safety line of her own, wearing a headset, and with a blueprint page covered in additional notes and calculations held open between her hands. Between consulting with the engineers that were not directly involved in either digging crew and passing along directions and navigation keys to the crews themselves, Ziva was the picture of professionalism and poise under pressure. To any who didn't know her, she might even look a little detached from everything behind the tension that flowed through the site. To McGee, everything about her told a different story.

It was written everywhere in her body language, from the tighter-than-would-be-wise grip she had on the blueprint with her broken hand, to the way she was never fully turned away from the rubble, whether or not she needed to be. Knowing what he did of her past, and seeing how she'd fit unexpectedly perfectly in with their tightly knit group, he knew exactly what he was looking at, and it wasn't detached, hard-as-nails professionalism: it was fear, for what was happening down bellow and beyond their reach, determination, to do what needed to be done without letting that get in the way, and a simmering anger, barely being held just bellow the point of boiling over. He figured the last was pretty evenly split between being directed at their boss, and at herself, for having broken her hand and landing herself on the relative sidelines.

If she could, McGee had no doubt that she would bind her hand even tighter, and if necessary, strap a small digging pick to it to be able to be down in there herself. If Gibbs hadn't been there, she might've even tried and gotten away with it; he honestly couldn't picture any of the emergency service boys, or least of all any of the engineers, having the stomach to get in her way.

The image of what would ensue should they try was enough to draw a quick smirk as he came to stand beside her, silent as he watched her pour over the written notes and the drawings underneath them, speaking into her headset as she went.

"You should be able to see what is left of the stairwell as you pass it – the explosions occurred in a way to create a symmetrical and direct collapse... yes, a great deal of the building's wiring was routed through the area, but the builder's specifications state their insulation was reinforced two years ago, in an effort to guard against electrical fires. Regardless, Senior Field Engineer Ramirez has informed me that they have managed to get them to terminate the power to this area, so there is no danger of... no, they tell me it should be safe, but to avoid cutting through them if you are able to simply go around or over. Understood. Let me know when you have passed the stairs; you may need to alter your direction soon, with the amount of reinforcement and concrete supports that they used to fortify the lower levels." Falling silent while she waited, she at last noticed McGee standing next to her, and her focus shifted for a moment.

"You have recently spoken with Tony?" To her immense credit, very little, if any, of her fight for control came through in the question. McGee nodded, and wished he could have sat in on at least that small bit of Mossad training.

"Yeah, just a couple of minutes ago," he said. He turned back to face the rubble when holding her gaze became too much, with all that swam around in his head, and all that he was trying to avoid saying. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her hesitate, then follow suit.

"We are losing him." It wasn't a question, and McGee, for the moment lost to his own struggle, didn't answer. They stood in silence for countless minutes before she sighed in frustration, and he glanced over to see her dark eyes darken even further, her broken hand clenching around the pages. "We are not moving quickly enough, but I cannot find them a faster way – there is too much debris, and the building is too unstable for any more direct of a route." She blinked furiously at the sudden welling of her eyes, clenching the blackened hand again and muffling the grunt of pain behind clenched teeth. "I am failing him... both of them."

McGee blinked in shock at the uncharacteristically honest admission, but quickly ignored his shock to grip her arm just above the wrist, halting the movements that made him wince just thinking about them. "No, you're not," he said, more sure of this than anything else in all of this. "You said it yourself: with the debris and the instability, there _is_ no faster way. If there was, you would have found it. We're all doing what we can, as quickly as we can do it – it'll have to be enough."

"And if it is not, I imagine there will be time enough later to apologize to their corpses, yes?" she snapped, snatching her arm away. McGee felt as though he'd been slapped, and could see that she regretted her words almost immediately. She breathed deep, visibly reeling herself back in until her control was tightly back in place and her voice steady. "I am sorry McGee, that was uncalled for."

He shook his head, and tried to take a page from Ziva's book in being collected. "Don't worry about it. It's..."

A quick gesture silenced him as her eyes fell back to her blueprints, her concentration returning swiftly as someone spoke to her over the other line. "You have made it through? Good, now you will need to –"

A long, rumbling groan from the ruins before them interrupted her, sending their hearts racing and drawing the attention of all on the site. A pregnant silence ensued... and then a second groan rippled through, louder and lasting longer than before, and sending a tremble through the ground beneath their feet. Ziva's face went from controlled to shockingly panicked, and she dropped her papers, pressing against her headset with her good hand.

"Gibbs! Turn back now! The building –"

The rest of her sentence was lost as an ear-piercing screech split the air, and they were helpless to do anything but watch as the rubble shifted around Gibbs' digging site, held for a second longer, and then collapsed inward in a shroud of deafening noise and suffocating dust.

* * *

With no shortage of cursing and scraped knuckles, Gibbs and the three engineers who'd come with him fought their way through the obstructions encasing the exposed gas lines and piping blocking the way. It was easy to see they'd made the right and only choice in relocating all the heavier equipment to a new point of attack – no way would anything bigger than the hand held saw in the satchel across his chest make it through.

When the initial rescue party had divided, they'd been picky about choosing only the bare essentials, to reduce the chance of getting themselves stuck while manoeuvrings through tight spaces, and had come away with a mini med kit a piece, crowbars, cutters, small saws, and helmets with mounted lights. As it was, them and their limited equipment they'd had to strapped to themselves barely managed, and Gibbs forced himself to stop counting the minutes as they reached and passed the hour mark, knowing that he would drive himself insane in short order if he didn't.

Harder to block out than the time that bled away from them with every wasted second were his own words, haunting him every step of the way.

Hearing that Abby, as much a daughter to him as his own had been, was trapped and unresponsive down there with Tony had been like tossing fuel on a lit match – he'd let himself be set off quickly, brutally, and had cooled down in the same manner, but not quickly enough. He'd never been much for finesse, as every woman he'd been with, and every director he'd driven to retirement could attest to, but this was a screw up that was far beyond such easy dismissal.

His own tactless idiocy burned him. He'd been unthinking. He'd been cruel. He'd been wrong. And the longer he went without being able to say so to the one person who needed to know it, the hotter and more oppressively it burned, and the louder his own words shouted to be remembered.

Not that he didn't deserve it, all of it, because he knew he did. It was just damned aggravating to try to concentrate around it.

Climbing over a particularly jagged mound of debris jarred his bad knee and he swore at the stab that radiated up and down his leg, but had the presence of mind to be grateful that Ziva, though she had to have heard the less than gentle sentiment, never broke stride in the directions she was relaying. Ever since the initial dive for cover just before the final bomb blew, that old irritation had cropped up with a vengeance, with shooting pains impossible to ignore, leaving just barely enough room for him to work around it to walk with only half the limp that it encouraged.

Of course, as per the favorite Marine past time of climbing out of one's death bed and claiming a common cold if it'd get them on a mission's roster, he'd very skillfully found reasons to lock the joint and simply hold steady in one spot whenever a paramedic lurked nearby. If they'd known, they wouldn't have let him get within fifty feet of this death trap, and he would not risk being bared from going in; he'd promised Tony they'd get them out, and he'd damn well keep his word for himself – there was no way he'd leave his boy in the hands of complete strangers.

The remainder of the stairs and the jungle of wiring around them were the next obstacles for them to crawl into. As per Ziva's instructions, they spent precious minutes (he was still refusing to count them, as long as they were still wasting them) clearing a path through without cutting any of them, and while carefully avoiding any of the bared and frayed copper twines. It was slow, tedious work, involving ever more scraped knuckles and muttered oaths, but it was otherwise passed in silence, each man all too aware of how time was of the essence, and not to be used up on conversation unless said conversation would get them there and get them out any faster.

It was just as they were moving on, and Ziva was about to give them their course correction, that they heard sounds that signified exactly what they'd all been silently fearing and anticipating; they'd all known this area was unstable when they decided to keep pressing forward, and they'd gone in anyway, determined not to waste this faster pathway. And now, it was coming down on their heads.

Gibbs couldn't say for sure how it ended up the way that it did; with the dust and dirt cascading down on them, their headlamps were of little use, and the roar of shifting metal and concrete drowned out anything that might have been said, so no split-second plans could be shouted. All that he'd had time to decide as soon as he'd known what was about to happen was that there was no way he was turning back, like Ziva had yelled through his headset for him to do; he was going to get to his people – the only way, was forward.

When the chaos was over, and the dust began settling again, he allowed himself little more than a sideways acknowledgment of the array of new aches and the screaming in his knee, focusing instead on testing his radio as soon as he could push himself back up into a hunched sitting position in the space he'd been afforded when he'd launched himself ahead of the collapse.

"Ziva, this is Gibbs, do you read me?" There was a tenfold increase in static on the other end, but the answer still managed to get through clear enough for him to hear its tangible relief.

"_Yes, I read you. Are you hurt? Did any of the other three survive? Are you able to find a way back out?_"

"No, don't know, and maybe, but I won't. I'm gonna keep going."

"_Gibbs, you can't –_"

"Tony's still down there Ziva," he interrupted icily. "I won't come back out without him. And I won't waste time that isn't there to waste arguing with you on this." He'd already disconnected himself from his safety line and was getting ready to ignore any protest to come, when instead she came back an understanding that perhaps hinted at a touch of forgiveness being sent his way.

"_Adjust your course so that you travel at a slight diagonal to where the stairs were, and readjust to a straight line after no more than ten feet. That should get you past the remainder of the reinforcements from the stairwell. Good luck, Gibbs. It would perhaps be best for you to turn off your radio to conserve battery strength._"

As always, he was grateful for the Israeli's capacity for being cool headed in the face of turmoil – she did what she had to do, and let others do the same if it meant it was done right; in that way, they truly understood one another. That was the chief reason he'd let Jen Sheppard get away with assigning her to his team without his say so in the first place. Otherwise, Mossad or not, he would've booted her ass to the curb within a day. Two, tops.

"Agreed. I'll radio in once I've found them. Take care of things up top Ziva – I know I can count on you."

Without waiting for a response to the likely unexpected vote of confidence, he killed the power, and was left with nothing else to do, but to press on.

* * *

When Tony startled back from the brink of unconsciousness for what had to be the hundredth time in mere minutes, he became much more aware of a few key points.

The first was that for a long time now (and he couldn't be sure how long since it'd been even longer still since he'd had the energy to check his watch) he hadn't been speaking aloud, lacking the energy to project beyond a low monotone, despite the fact that his brain still strolled endlessly through mounds of nonsensical gibberish – his first car, his first girl... his first restraining order against a less than stable ex... all kinds of great and memorable moments.

The second was that while he was shaking non-stop now, he couldn't actually feel the cold, or the pain much any more. He wanted to be worried, maybe even a little scared, but any such reaction was far overshadowed by the third and final thing to come to mind: he couldn't hear Abby.

A weak shot of adrenaline shot through his exhausted, overtaxed system when that thought sunk in fully, for the moment chasing away the numbness as he held his breath and heard... nothing.

_No... please, no..._

"Abbs... Abby... _Abby!_" His voice grew in volume and desperation each time he called her name, but it made no difference, and he fought back tears, the earlier helplessness crashing down on him, beating him into the ground...

...a ground that, now he thought about it, was a pile of debris. Debris that could be moved, dug out.

A plan bloomed and he latched onto it, near crazed in his need to do _something_ other than just lay there for one more _fucking minute_.

It was dangerous, and a quiet voice told him it was straddling the ridiculously-boneheaded line, but he was far past caring. Rather than stop to give himself time to reconsider, he pried his hand off the cloth over the wound that had long surpassed saturation and gritted his teeth against the waves of pain as he twisted his arm just enough for numb fingers to go to work. He clawed at the pieces he lay on top of, heedless of the pain worsening as he went, and doing his best to balance his body slightly away from the growing gap. With each swipe of his hand, all he heard was the silence where Abby's breaths should be, and his movements only grew more and more frantic.

Cracked ribs heaved, his lungs burned, his head pounded, his hands shook and his fingertips bled, but when he thought he'd cleared enough away, or at least as much as he would ever be able to, he didn't hesitate. All in one motion, he let his body tilt over into the gap he'd created under the right side of his body at the same time as both his hands came up to grip the steel rod, just above where it entered his stomach.

And without another thought except to hope that this didn't knock him out or kill him, he pushed up and wrenched himself away.

And then he was screaming.

His vision went white, every muscle and bone in his body freezing and locking at the sheer, overwhelming shock of the agony tearing through him as he felt half of the steel shaft pulled from his stomach. It felt as though every nerve ending were firing off all at once in a riot of pain that threatened to engulf him...

But it wasn't enough to free him, and soon enough, his lungs would allow for no more screaming, but luckily, had not suffered enough abuse to warrant more than a few hacking coughs, which trailed off into faltering moans as he did his best to ride through the aftershocks. Defeat flowed outwards with every ragged heartbeat as he came to the unavoidable conclusion that the second attempt would honestly do him in; he _could not_ do that again. He just couldn't.

It brought him little relief when the cold gradually began to sweep over him once more in the pain's stead, for in that moment, he knew only this: Abby had apparently stopped breathing, and he would spend the window of the precious few minutes available to save her life laying here, unable to finish what was needed to free himself.

She'd been his responsibility. And unknowingly or not, he was the reason she'd stayed... and he would be the final piece of the reason she died, because he couldn't bring himself to do what needed to be done.

He'd never felt so much the coward in all his life.

His own bitter accusations were still reverberating around in his pounding head when suddenly something closed around his shoulder in a grip of iron, and over his startled gasp, he managed to make out the most wonderful words he'd ever heard:

"Try that again DiNozzo, and bleeding to death will be the least of your immediate concerns."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** And so begins Chapter 6 – no more than a few days after 5, as promised :) And I want to use this A/N to talk to a few anonymous reviewers in particular:

To _Anonymous_: Thanks so much for "delurking" long enough to leave such a wonderful review :) - Oh, and I definitely appreciate you pointing out my repeated slip ups with the spelling of "lose" and "losing" - I always manage to stick in double letters where the don't belong :S lol However, thanks to you, I've gone back through each chapter, and I'm pretty sure I managed to find and fix them all. Many thanks for the help!

To _kitt_: Thanks so much for the review – I'm thrilled to hear how much you're enjoying it so far! I'm sorry that you've probably already left town at this point, but I did try to have it finished up in time – Well, at least this way, you'll have something to read when you get back :) Take care, enjoy your holiday, and definitely drop in to tell me what you think of this one when you get the chance!

That said, thanks as always to everyone reading and everyone reviewing – the response I'm getting to this story is the best I've ever gotten for anything I've written, and I'm absolutely blown away! And for the record, this chapter totally would've been up early Saturday night had I not ended up with mild food poisoning from lunch (a warning to any looking to adventurously try out unknown, and relatively off the map Chinese food restaurants without first consulting a certified Health Inspector) – having to stop to get sick all the time really put a cramp in my writing process 0_o That's actually also the reason it's a little shorter than I would've liked... I've well and truly reached my quitting time!

Anyways, thanks again to all, for making this thing a joy to write, and I hope you all enjoy what's coming next :)

* * *

There were plenty of moments in the long life and career of Leroy Jethro Gibbs that would stick with him for the duration: the day he joined the Marines... the day he met Shannon, and the terror of proposing, followed by the joy of their wedding... the moment his wife became a mother to their daughter, and he a father, followed by the emptiness of losing them both, and of course there was being recruited by NCIS...

Just like in all of those moments, he knew that this moment – the sound of that screaming that froze his blood in his veins and made everything in him want to recoil and charge ahead all at once – would be branded in his memory until the day he died.

Since he'd been cut off from the surface and working his way further and further from his pinned safety line, he'd become entirely concentrated on the task at hand and practically submerged in the repetitiveness of it, but that scream... it was a bucket of ice water to the face, a punch to the gut, a knife in his chest. He couldn't breathe, listening to it, couldn't think anything outside of how he'd give anything – his home, his career, his life – to never, _ever_ hear that sound come from another human being, from _Tony_, ever again.

And it just kept on going.

With a ferocious abandon that drowned out his body's complaints, he threw himself back into his work, the scream growing louder, and spurring him on ever faster, the closer he got to its source. And then, after what could have been two minutes or twenty, it grew weaker and trailed off, and suddenly he was there, or very nearly – he'd hit a roadblock in the form of a concrete slab held up by surrounding debris like a wall in front of him.

Moans could be heard coming from the other side as Gibbs began searching for a way around under the limited light of his head lamp. His search took him to the end of the slab and a small section of rubble that, thought tightly compacted, was composed of materials that would be much easier to break through with only his crowbar to work with, and without risking having the structure above made more unstable with its removal. Near the bottom of the pile was an opening just big enough for him to fit his hand, and so he pushed through, looking to determine how thick the obstruction was, to be able to know how to go about tearing it down. What he didn't expect was his fingertips to suddenly connect with something solid, warm and shaking...

Realization came with a jolt, and his hand clamped down on what felt like a shoulder of its own volition, and there were so many things that he suddenly wanted to say all at once, but then he thought again of that terrible scream, and he knew in his gut what Tony must have tried to do to have put himself in that kind of pain, and so frustration and worried anger won out.

"Try that again DiNozzo, and bleeding to death will be the least of your immediate concerns." He cringed as soon as the words left his mouth, his mind replaying once more his earlier foul up over the radio. He was rallying for a more gentle follow up when Tony answered.

"Don't... worry... wasn't planning on... an encore... of that," came the gasped words, and Gibbs frowned at the sour note of bitterness they were spoken with, but had no choice but to file it away for later examination. He could feel their time running out, almost as though a timer had been built into him, counting down to the second how long they had before their house of cards finally came crashing the rest of the way down. And maybe he was being more than a little foolishly optimistic, but he planned on the three of them being long gone before that happened.

And that brought him to thinking of the third member of that three...

"Tony –"

"Boss, you gotta... get to Abby," his agent interrupted, abruptly frantic in a way that sent Gibbs' heart hammering. What he said next almost made that heart stop all together. "Haven't... heard her b... breathing... past couple of... minutes... maybe... longer..."

He could feel Tony's hand, nauseatingly tacky with what he knew had to be his own blood, come up to grab his where it still resided on his shoulder. His stomach twisted at the weakness in his grip, but he forced the reaction down, knowing that he had to prioritize, and forcing himself to allow one to take precedence over the other. Either Abby's breaths had grown too quiet to be heard, or she'd stopped breathing all together, which meant he only had a few minutes more before brain damage began to set in, and little more after that before she was lost altogether. There was only one thing he could do.

"Give me your best guess of where she is." He accompanied the demand with a gentle squeeze to his shoulder that he hoped softened its edge. The briefest increase in Tony's feather-light grip let him know the message was received.

"Down and... to the... left... of me, no more than... fifteen feet," he said, then Gibbs felt his hand slide away. "Help her... Boss... _please_... she can't... she can't die down... here, not... not like this..."

He was already taking back his hand and digging quickly through the least resisting path to where Tony had directed him before his brain caught up and whispered, _Neither can you, Tony_. But he couldn't turn back now, and filed that away with things needing to be said, promising himself that he'd say it before the night was over. Tony deserved at least that much from him, and far more.

He was almost there when he remembered suddenly the other two members on his team awaiting news up top, and he stopped long enough to turn his radio back on, then picked right up again as he spoke.

"Ziva, this is Gibbs, come in." There was barely a second's pause before the Israeli's brusque tone was answering.

"_Gibbs. Have you found them?_" she asked immediately, and he could dimly hear McGee's voice demanding the same in the background.

"Yeah, found Tony, and he's conscious, but I haven't gotten to him yet – working my way over to Abby first," he said, wincing as a chunk of metal fell to hit his shoulder, but not letting it slow him down for even a second. "She's in pretty rough shape, by the sounds of it. I'm almost to her – I'll radio in specifics in a few minutes."

"_Understood. I will have one of the paramedics standing by for you to speak with when you do._"

With little more than a grunt of acknowledgment, he carried on scraping, and prying, and hacking, and cutting until he came to the final obstacle, behind which, he was beyond relieved to note, faltering breaths could be heard. The barrier was little more than tangles of wire and shafts of bent and twisted metal, and it took wonderfully little time to cut through the pieces anchoring it all in place. Then he was gripping it with both hands, and cursing himself avidly as he hesitated.

This was Abby, the daughter he'd never seen grow up, someone he'd worked with, adored, and done everything he could to protect for so many years he'd stopped counting... and once this wall came down, there would be no avoiding the truth: as much as he had initially blamed Tony for her being here when those bombs blew, for her being trapped and hurt, maybe gravely, he was as much to blame as anyone could be. When this wall came down, there would be no escaping the reality of what had happened, and of how he had failed her, as a boss, and as her friend.

Every time their team left the building, he always left reassuring himself that no matter what the other three were about to face along with him, Abby at least was in the safest place she could be. Before telling Tony to see that she went home, he'd thought the very same thing today.

It had never hurt so much to be wrong.

Shaking himself back to the present, and doing his best to brace himself for whatever condition he was about to find her in, Gibbs drew in a deep breath and pulled.

* * *

The moment Ziva finished the transmission, she was yelling to one of the nearby engineers to retrieve a paramedic, apparently unwilling to leave her position even now, and she spared him only a quick nod when McGee told her he was going to check in with Tony again before she was back on the radio with the other digging team, demanding a status report in a tone that would've had his knees knocking together had it been directed at him. Wanting to get back to her before Gibbs returned with news, his heart at war with being terrified to know Abby's condition while at the same time desperately needing to, McGee all but ran back to his equipment. When he got there, he paused for only a moment to catch his breath, but before he could sit back down and activate the radio, he was set upon by the same IRT techs who'd tremblingly accompanied his equipment hours earlier.

"Sir?"

"What is it?" he asked with barely controlled impatience, pausing halfway to sitting to glare up at the pair. One tech held a PDA, while the other was clutching a memory stick. He forced a little of the glare from his face at the obvious trepidation, trying to remind himself that he'd been at least somewhat close to where they were now, once upon a time.

PDA tech took over while Memory Stick tech stood nervously behind him. "Sir, we have the information you requested earlier, to do with the initial threat made. You requested it be brought to you as soon as possible...?" Blinking in surprise, having almost forgotten asking them to handle that, he held out both hands, and the PDA was placed in one, the memory stick in the other.

"Thanks guys... and you don't have to call me sir," he assured with grudging gratitude, sitting and turning back to his station and the laptop on the end.

"Of course, Sir."

Rolling his eyes and waving them off, McGee turned his full attention first to the PDA, eyes settling on the labeled 911 call, and he immediately keyed it up, holding one of the attached earphones to his ear to be able to hear it over the racket going on around him, not wanting to attach the second one for fear of not hearing Ziva calling to him whenever Gibbs was back on the line. He turned the volume as high as he could stand, and closed his eyes as he listened.

_'911, Emergency response, please state your emergency.'_

_'Hello? Can you hear me?'_

_'Yes, Ma'am, I'm here. Please state your name, and the nature of your emergency.'_

_'My name is Hooriya Kouri. There are bombs in the NCIS building... You must tell them to evacuate immediately!... He talked about it once, but I never thought he would actually do it... I tried to get him to listen, but he _won't_...'_

_'An order to evacuate is being sent. Ma'am, could you tell me the name of the terrorist? Is he acting alone? Is he otherwise armed?'_

_'He's not a terrorist! He's my brother... Muhannad... Muhannad Ganim... please, you must help him! He called me, he sounded so afraid...'_

_'Emergency personnel are on their way, Mrs. Kouri. Please stay on the line until –'_

_'No, I have to go, I think I know where he might be.'_

_'Mrs. Kouri I need you to leave the building immediately, _do not_ approach him. Stay on the line, and once emergency personnel have arrived on scene, they will –'_

The recording ended there as the caller, this Hooriya Kouri, apparently hung up, and McGee opened his eyes with a frown. The call would suggest that both the bomber and his sister were on site for detonation, and habit from their usual case procedures led him to turn automatically to the laptop and the memory stick that would contain the security footage retrieved from their secondary server on the other side of Washington, knowing that they would be needing faces to go with the names of both persons in question in the reports that would follow in the aftermath of tonight.

Aiming to do only a quick scan before returning to Ziva to await an update from Gibbs, McGee paid far less attention than he thought he probably should to the faces on the screen from the main lobby as he darted through recordings as early as two hours before detonation, thinking to start by looking for anyone appearing nervous or out of place enough to maybe be their bomber. He'd been browsing for less than a minute before he caught a flash of something that made him do a double take, though he couldn't be sure why, the image passing too quickly for his brain to fully take it in. Hitting the button to rewind, he watched more carefully this time, trying to see what could have caught his attention.

And then he saw it: something that struck him dumb with shock, and left his heart tripping over itself. _It can't be..._

Breathless and dry mouthed, he rewound again, and replayed the moment that took only a handful of seconds of film time frame by frame. And there it was, plain as day, and McGee was scrambling out of his chair and yelling to Ziva, watching as she heard him and reacted to his urgency by running full tilt towards him, only to stumble very un-Ziva-like to a halt a few feet away, eyes widening and mouth dropping open a little as she stared mutely over his shoulder.

Slowly, dazedly, McGee turned to look. And found himself rooted to the spot, able only to whisper two words:

"Holy shit."

* * *

Once he'd torn down the last of the tangled mess and shoved it as far out of the way as was possible, which wasn't terribly far given the tight quarters, Gibbs turned and looked down with an aching heart at the form pinned from the waist down by a mound of rubble, face half angled away and obscured by black hair, chest rising and falling in small, shaky movements that produced painful-sounding breaths.

Breaking through his agony at seeing her like this with no shortage of difficulty, Gibbs crawled to her side and used his cleanest hand to start gently brushing away hair that was matted with blood, having to use all of his willpower to keep the nausea at bay when a part of the bone on the side of her head sunk inwards a little at his touch.

"Abbs? Can you hear me? It's Gibbs," he whispered, terrified that she wasn't going to answer.

He pushed away the last bit of hair just as her head turned just enough for pained eyes to gaze sadly up at him, and his breath caught in his throat as he was able to do nothing but stare back, words completely evading at him.

At that exact moment, his radio came alive, Ziva sounding more stunned than he would have ever thought possible of the agent.

"_Gibbs... there's been a... a development..._" He blinked slowly, forcing himself to breathe again so that he could answer, his tone almost matching hers to a tee.

"I think I already know what it is, Ziva," he said, staring down into the shockingly blue eyes that had yet to look away from his.

This woman was not Abby Sciuto.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** So, went to post this Monday, but decided at the last minute that I didn't like it. So I went over it, fixed it, and went to post it Wednesday... and decided I liked it even less than before...

...and I'm still not sure I like it now, but I decided you'd all waited long enough, and so here it is :P

Thanks to all the wonderful someones who've been along with this one since the start, and to all who've dropped in since – nothing is more encouraging and inspiring than the feedback and awesome support you've all been giving :)

And now for a few responses to anonymous reviewers:

To _kitt_: Glad that it was worth the wait before – hope this latest addition falls under the same category xP Thanks so much for the terrific review, and hope your vacation rocked!

To : Hehe – LOVE that that little twist earned the epic double-take! – And not to worry, all shall be revealed here today… Or, rather, almost all. :)

To _Ink11_: Thank you, thank you, _thank you_! :D That's wonderful of you to say – man oh man, I wish I could do that! … And I'd apologize for the cliffie... but the new one coming up ain't gonna be any more gentle :} Mua-ha.

Anyways, looking forward to hearing what you all think of of this one – it's the beginning of the end folks... read, review, and enjoy!

* * *

Abby Sciuto, Forensic Scientist Extraordinaire, had never before been so glad to accept an invitation to come and get pampered at Casa DiNozzo. All week had been nothing but compounded hours of head-cold-induced misery that she'd had to keep working through since, of course, almost every other tech in the place was sick at home with a variation of the same thing... and dammit, forensics waited for no cold bug!

...no matter how god-awful said bug had turned out to be.

So she'd stayed all week, and had been thoroughly regretting it until Tony had come downstairs, dressed and ready for the big times in his tac gear, having been about to say something, but stopping himself to give her a intent once-over and saying instead: "Go lie down. As soon as I get back, you're coming back to my place with me for the weekend – lots of goodies, _lots_ of drugs, and no arguments about either." And with that he'd grinned, kissed her quickly on the cheek, ushered her towards her cot in the next room, and had sprinted back out the door.

Too tired and stuffy to protest even to an empty room, she'd shuffled off to do as she was told, and had nearly dosed off until, little more than half-an-hour later, her cell phone had rung, and she'd picked it up almost immediately, thinking in her haze that it was Tony calling to let her know he was on his way back. Of course, she couldn't have realized that barely enough time had gone by for them to actually get where they were going, never mind doing their thing and coming home the victors.

As it turns out, it was an epically terrible time to not check her caller I.D.

Instead of Tony, it was Leonard, a recent goth-convert friend of hers who'd come in town to visit and catch a concert with her the previous weekend, had stayed at her place to save on a hotel room, and had proceeded to leave his house keys behind somewhere in her apartment when leaving for the airport that morning. Her mission now, whether or not she chose to accept it (and she _really_ didn't want to): meet him at her place ASAP, let him in to get his keys, and get back to NCIS afterward, all while feeling as though her head were filled with an alternately super-heated and sub-zero-temperature mercury/lead compound, and having her nose run like a leaky faucet. No problem.

One thing was for sure, there was _no way _she would be driving herself. And so, after calling up to the front security desk and asking them to call her a cab, and leaving a note for Tony on her lab's door in case he beat her back, she spent the next fifteen minutes struggling to get herself mobile and into the elevator. By the time she reached the lobby, she was ready to quit and go back downstairs, but thoughts of the VIP treatment that awaited her this weekend kept her resolve strong and her feet moving. Of course, that didn't keep those feet from tripping and sprawling her into the startled arms of a young Arabic man in a suit who was at that moment coming in as she was going out. He seemed quite upset about the accident even after she righted herself and apologized, though too busy fussing over the satchel he carried to even look at her again, so she shook it off (_very_ carefully), and carried on tiredly to where her cab was parked and waiting for her by the curb.

The cab driver definitely earned himself a tip both from being able to decipher her muffled cold-speak correctly, and for having a full box of tissues available for her indiscriminate use for the entirety of the trip that got them across town just ahead of the worst of the end of the day rush. Leonard was already there when she pulled up and got the cabbie to park as close to the front door as semi-legally possible, and when she let him in, he rushed ahead of her, rambling about having already missed his flight twice as he raced around flipping cushions and riffling under papers.

While waiting for him, she figured she might as well go to her bedroom and pack a small bag for while she was at Tony's, and by the time she'd finished, he was running back out to his rental car, calling thanks and goodbyes over his shoulder. She didn't really hear him, or particularly care, as every ounce of her concentration was on managing the latest sneezing-spree without letting vertigo send her tumbling head over heels down the stairs on her way out the door.

Relief at making it back to the cab and at them turning around to get her back to work was short-lived; after fighting for almost an hour against the usual quitting-time traffic jam, they were confronted with an even bigger one when they reached the halfway mark and ended up stuck along with everyone else behind the mayhem of an accident involving cars from both directions. It took them almost three hours to inch their way through, and the rest of the way to the office, which was a test of wills and the strength of her stomach as cars played far dirtier than average in an effort to make up for lost time in getting where they were going.

One thing was for sure: it was a good thing she'd left that note – the team had to have gotten back by now, and the last thing she would want would be to make Tony worry, thinking she'd gone and disappeared, and feeling like she did. For all his bravado and apparent cavalier attitude most days, she knew how protective he could get over any one of them.

Then again, if they'd gotten back to the office before her, and he'd found her note, he would've called by now to check on her and see how much longer she'd be... which had to mean they'd gotten held up even longer than she did, getting their suspects into custody and cleaning up afterward. So apparently, it wouldn't have mattered, one way or the other.

After all the complications of the normally simple trip involved with going and coming back, she couldn't really wrap her stuffed and muggy head around what she was seeing through the windshield as the cabbie finally pulled to the side to let her out, apologetically saying that he couldn't take her beyond this point. She paid her fare with a mumbled thanks before climbing out and staring blankly at the police road block and countless emergency vehicles that had the entire three blocks between her and NCIS completely shut down. A thick crowd of reporters and angry pedestrians milled about in front of it, and the sound of heavy machinery being operated could be heard far off down the street.

_What. The. Hell._

She was almost able to forget how sick she was as she elbowed her way through and stomped up to a few of the patrolmen manning the road block, cursing as her fierceness was interrupted with another violent sneeze, but not letting it faze her otherwise. "What's going on? What's happened?"

"Stand back, Miss," said the oldest of the two, gesturing her back a few steps while his partner seemed to leave to chase after a camera man who'd slipped by. "Emergency personnel only from here on in. The immediate area around ground zero won't be cleared for access to civilians until at least tomorrow night."

She froze, her mind going blank as she gaped openly at the man. "What do you mean... ground zero."

"There were explosions in the NCIS building a couple of hours ago – the building was destroyed," he said slowly, caught off guard by her obvious reaction. Until of course she wordlessly showed him her ID badge, and then his expression radiated nothing but sympathy as he looked from it back to her. "You have friends in there?"

"Yes... maybe... I don't know, they might not have gotten back yet, when..." She trailed off, biting her lip to hold back tears as she stared over his shoulder, down the street in the direction of the place she'd left only hours ago, her second home... and now possibly the scene of a loss she knew she would never recover from.

A hand was on her arm, guiding her around to the other side of the road block, but all she could do was look ahead as they moved, terrifyingly closer to the center of the chaos with every step. The officer spoke to her, saying something about not worrying too much, promising they'd find out if her friends were among those who'd been evacuated in time, if maybe they were on the list of those who'd been the first group to be sent to the hospital, but she couldn't answer, couldn't even so much as nod to show that she'd heard.

The further they walked, the closer they came to her worst nightmare, and it was all of it too much; the dust in the air that wouldn't settle, the debris scattered as far as the street, the flashing lights, the smell of burnt metal, the fire trucks, the ambulances coming and going, the dull roar of machinery and yelled conversations, piles of bloodied gauze dotting the ground... too much, too much, _too much_.

Her mind was racing, her eyes stinging from the acrid air while darting from one horror to the next, her breath hitching, and the further they walked, the more she felt herself diving headlong into a panic...

And then she heard McGee's voice yelling to Ziva – so close, only a handful of steps in front and a little to the side of her, and how could she not have noticed him until now? Even from behind, and covered in dust and dirt smears indicative of having been thrown to the ground, she instantly recognized him, and felt herself overwhelmed now for an entirely different reason.

McGee's call had Ziva was running towards them, and Abby felt a smile explode across her face at the sight of her, though she inwardly cringed at the sight of her hand, which _had_ to be broken to look that awful. But then Ziva's gaze landed on her and she stumbled and stopped, staring at her with a confusing level of shock, even disbelief, which was exactly mirrored on McGee's face as he followed Ziva's gaze, and stood there open mouthed, looking as though he'd seen a ghost.

"Holy shit." She blinked at words that so rarely, if _ever_, came from McGee's mouth, and felt her confusion grow to new heights at what Ziva radioed to Gibbs, and at the way they continued to stare even then.

"What?" she asked abruptly when it started to get unnerving. The question seemed to snap them both out of whatever was wrong with them, and McGee was the first to speak.

"Abby... where _the hell_ have you _been_?" She was again startled by his coarseness, so unlike his usual geeky and unassuming persona that it took her a moment to be able to respond.

"A friend, my friend, that was staying over while he was in town, he called me after you guys left, he needed me to go across town to let him back into my place to find his keys, so I took a cab, 'cause I still feel completely horrible, and I would've been back sooner, but there was an accident, and I got stuck in traffic, and I..."

She trailed off, for the first time seeing all of what was written across their faces: exhaustion and pain, of course, since it looked like they'd barely made it out before the building came down, but also strain, weariness, and a deeply embedded fear...

"You thought I was inside," she said as it came to her, and they nodded, then exchanged a quick, unreadable look. She realized then that the fear wasn't going away, around the same time that she noticed that she had yet to see Tony or Gibbs mingling in with the rest of the crews on site, and she frowned, looking around them, craning her neck to try spotting them. "Where's Gibbs? Where's Tony? I know they're probably busy, but I want to..." She trailed off yet again as their expressions grew more strained, and the relief she'd felt before twisted inside her stomach and tied itself into a tight, painful knot. She had a terrible thought that she already knew the answer before she quietly asked her question.

"Where are they?"

* * *

Gibbs couldn't rightly decide what he was feeling right then... couldn't really put a name to it. Somewhere in between trying his best to prepare for the very real possibility of loosing Abby and suddenly being able to assume she'd somehow turned up on the surface after all this time, he was confronted with a stranger instead of a friend, and now felt at odds with the simultaneous relief and guilt at that relief, looking down on this woman.

The darkness of her hair and the shape of her eyes and face easily identified her as being of Middle-Eastern decent, likely Arabic or Persian, and in spite of her wounds and her pallid skin, he could tell that she was young, even beautiful. His gut told him she hadn't played a part in this destruction as much as her eyes did, their blue a stunning sapphire and filled with such gentle sadness in spite of the obvious magnitude of her pain that he couldn't even entertain the thought of looking away. She wasn't his Abby, but she was still an innocent, and from the look and sound of things, there was little to no chance she would be able to hold on long enough for the rest of the cavalry to show up.

In the end, her dying was no less terrible – she may not be _his_ tragedy, but that didn't stop her from being someone else's. And that knowledge was no easier to bear now than it ever was with any of the victims he'd encountered over the years in this job.

With a heavy heart he looked down at her still, and his eyes were drawn then to the ID badge clipped to the pocket of the sweater she wore. He looked to it for a name, but saw that it was only a visitor's badge, and so met her gaze once more.

"Can you tell me your name?" he asked gently.

"_H... Hoori...ya_," she whispered, her face twisting in a grimace, and Gibbs could see that it was getting more difficult by the second for her to breathe, and that her skin was now ashen underneath the blood. He knew then that she had even less time left than he'd originally thought, but dug out some confidence anyway, hoping to bring at least a small measure of comfort to her suffering. At this point, it certainly couldn't make things any worse.

"You'll be all right, Hooriya, we'll have you outta here in no time," he reassured, but she was shaking her head minutely, her gaze never leaving his.

She was silent a moment as she struggled for the air to speak, body jerking and trembling as it began to shut down, little by little. He gripped her hand tightly in his own, and she smiled tremulously at the contact, a tear slipping out to carve a path through dust and drying blood to fall silently to the rubble beneath her.

"_Tell... him... thank... you..._" she rasped, somehow knowing that he would know who she was referring to. Her eyes squeezed shut a moment as she bit her lip in a bid for control, and when she opened them to again find his, their radiance was startlingly pronounced, just a moment before their light began to dim. With a strength that astounded him, she found the will to speak a final time. "_... and... th... that... I... am... sor... ry... I... could... n-not stop... my... bro... ther._" The implications of her words floored him, but he swallowed the immediate conclusions wanting to be confirmed, and the questions bubbling up to be asked, and simply gave an astute nod.

"I will," he promised firmly, and could see that she believed him in the gratitude and relief that shone for just a second before the life in those beautiful eyes flickered, and then was gone.

Gibbs sat there a long moment beside her crushed body before he was able to bring himself to let go of her cold hand to place it on her chest and gently brush her eyelids closed, swallowing hard around the knot in his throat. The picture of what had to have happened tonight was slowly coming clear, and he knew that he had just witnessed the death of a woman easily as brave as any Marine he'd fought with.

In some ways, she'd been braver still; exactly the way Tony had run back into a building moments from destruction to save a friend that could not reasonably be saved, this woman, Hooriya, whose brother it would seem was the one behind this horrible night, had stayed in that very same building, sentencing herself to death trying to stop an attack that in the end she had no hope of stopping.

Looking down at her once more as he prepared to leave, he decided that he didn't need to have known her beforehand – the tragedy of her death would be his to share in, regardless.

By the time he'd returned to the veritable wall that stood between him and Tony, he'd carefully tucked Hooriya into the corner of his mind and was refocused on the problem at hand: saving the one that could still be saved, and sorting everything else out when they were both on the surface and could leave this place, this night, behind them.

Lost to his planning, and his worrying, Gibbs sat for a long moment in silence, until suddenly Tony spoke.

"So... I guess... that's it then," Tony said quietly when Gibbs didn't say anything at first upon his return. He hadn't been gone long at all, and had come back much slower than he'd left – it could only mean one thing, and even the mere beginning of his grief threatened to strangle him with it's intensity as he said what Gibbs apparently would not. "Abby's... dead... I let... her die."

Saying it out loud brought the full, crushing weight of it down on him and he found he couldn't keep silent, no matter how he tried; he bit his already bloodied lip, even clenched his hand over where it had returned to resting over his wound (he hadn't the strength to apply any real pressure any more), but he barely felt either action, and what began as a low moan grew in volume and in strength beyond his shattered control.

Abby was dead. She was _dead_. There was nothing that could be done to change that, no level of forgiveness that would ever negate his part in it, or make whatever Gibbs now felt towards him unjustified. He would deserve it, whatever Gibbs would say or do, and now he lay there, waiting for the guillotine to drop as surely as he was waiting for his body to simply give up fighting against the cold, against the unconsciousness that he knew he would not wake up from when it came.

In every way, he was spent, through and through, waiting tiredly to die.

Shocked first by Tony's assumption, and left heartbroken and shaken to his very core by the moaning wail that said louder than any words that Tony had finally reached the point beyond what he could endure, Gibbs forced his hand back through the opening and latched onto Tony's shoulder once more, his words almost shouted in their urgency to be heard.

"Tony, _hey_! She's not dead, Abby's not dead! She wasn't even there." A response was a long time in coming, and sounded more than a little sluggish and confused when it did.

"But... she... I heard..."

Gibbs forced down his worry, and tightened his grip. "It wasn't her, Tony... I don't know how, but she's up top. There _was_ a woman down here with you, but it wasn't her." The next question came quicker, but was still worryingly slurred, and utterly toneless.

"She didn't... make it, did... she?"

He sighed, and wished to hell he could bring himself to lie. "No."

Tony could hear the regret in the one word, and felt the same sentiment churning in his gut, and fought unsuccessfully to tamp it down and reorient himself, now that the situation had just done a completely unexpected turn in the opposite direction. He wanted to take reassurance from the fact that Abby was alive and safe, but knew on the other hand that a woman had still died, he'd still been unable to get to her; he wanted to be relieved that Gibbs was here, and to believe that everything would be all right like it always had seemed to be when the man charged in to save the day, but he could feel his strength draining from him with each passing second, like sand through a fisted hand, and he was too wrung out to fight any more.

With all that he wanted to feel, that regret was the only thing that stood out like a tangible thing as he felt Gibbs' hand leave and listened to his boss begin to fight to get to him. The longer he listened, and the more he slipped away, the more he felt the slightest bit of hysteria mix in with the regret; he thought of tonight as a whole, of all that could have been, all he'd tried and failed to do, or never even needed to, and finally he couldn't help the low, grating laugh that scraped through his raw throat and filled the air. Everything that had transpired to bring them to this moment was an example of Chaos Theory in dazzling action – a series of individual unrelated events, all conspiring to create an unforeseen and, in such a case as this, devastating finale.

This night, everything that had happened leading up to it and everything before and during, had conspired to accomplish a feat that so many had failed in – kidnappings, serial killers, plagues, gunfights, car bombs... they'd all fallen short of their seemingly inevitable conclusions. But this night, it seemed, with its many mistakes and misfortunes, would be the one to see things through to the end.

There was a pause in the sound of Gibbs working, and words were spilling out before he thought to stop them.

"Well...looks like...I've...finally...run out...Boss," he gasped quietly in the direction of the small opening. _Out of things to say, out of luck, out time to change how this night will end..._

"And what is it you've run out of DiNozzo?" The gruff voice sounded just that bit scared, and rightly so; all other bridges had been reduced to ash over the course of these final hours, all the usual avenues for survival failing or useless, while there was one that had sustained him so often these past few years that it had held strong until the last... until now.

Tony smiled grimly, and put a name to this, his final bridge to burn. "Al...mosts."

That one word was all it took.

Little more thought went to planning and assessing and working it through before acting – the second he heard that word, and everything unspoken that came with it, the precarious hold on Gibbs' calm snapped, and he blinked, and found himself attacking the wall that kept him from Tony with his crowbar with all the force of the pent-up helplessness of all these hours. He could hear himself yelling, but couldn't tell if there were any words as he hacked and stabbed and clawed his way through, pieces of the barrier falling everywhere around him and on him as he savagely pummeled through it.

His world narrowed to this task, to the man who lay on the other side who he knew now was giving up, that had said in fewer words that he wouldn't be holding on any longer, until he was tearing away the last of it with a final heave... and felt his world begin to crumble at what he found directly in front of him.

It was everything that he'd feared it would be, made all the more worse for the fact that there was no longer any room for hoping for the best, pretending that the best was possible. On the ground in front of his knees lay his senior field agent, horribly still aside from wheezing, whisper-quiet breaths that barely expanded his chest and sporadic tremors that were akin to spasms. From where he knelt, he stared at the iron rod that held Tony in place, at the blood that had coated the small portion that Tony had managed to pull out, and the hand, drenched in red, that lay limp over a saturated shred of sleeve that was wrapped around the point of entry. Dull green eyes met his when Gibbs managed to drag his gaze up to a blood-smeared face that, to his rising horror, was the exact same shade of sickly gray that he'd seen not ten minutes ago on the corpse of a woman who'd died almost as soon as he'd found her.

_Not going to be Tony... no way in hell._

And then he was moving, crawling around to Tony's right side and swallowing the threatening nausea as he hurriedly pushed handfuls of debris back under him to take the weight off of the wound that had left the ground below it stained in a pool of muddy red. Gibbs threw down his gloves and crowbar and whipped off his pack, diving into the the medical kit he'd been given and starting an IV in a frantic bid to compensate for at least some of the copious amount of blood-loss, hanging the bag of a jutting piece of metal by his face before turning his attention to the wound itself.

As gently as he could in his urgency, he pulled Tony's hand away and set it on the ground, proceeding to pull off the sodden bandage and cut away the tac vest it bits and pieces until the entirety of the damage was visible. Refusing to linger on the gruesome stain that covered the majority of the previously light-colored sweater, or the horrific way that the wound had been torn wider around the steel, its edges jagged, Gibbs spent the next few minutes packing whole rolls of gauze all around it, keeping it tight around the metal and pressed firmly into Tony's stomach.

While he worked he didn't let himself think about how Tony made not a sound throughout ministrations that should have left him in agony, nor had his eyes stopped their flat studying of him, which he realized when at last he looked back at that ghostly face. Knowing that what he would need to do next might well be more than either could handle, he figured some explanation was warranted.

"If we're going to be able to move you, I'm going to have to cut out a section of the rod to give us enough leeway to pull you out of here," he said in a calm tone that bellied the twisting in his chest. "It's... it's going to hurt pretty bad, and your blood pressure's so low from how much blood you've already lost that I can't risk giving you any morphine, or I could stop your heart."

He swallowed hard and waited a moment – for an answer, a reaction of any type, for permission, for forgiveness of the pain he was going to have to put him in... he couldn't be sure. Finally though, Tony blinked up at him, seeming drawn from a haze as he breathed as deep as he could, tightened his jaw, and nodded, just once, before squeezing his eyes shut in preparation. The only way Gibbs could go through with this was to not give himself time to think about it, to not hesitate. So he didn't.

And when he took hold of the end of the rod closest to Tony's stomach and used his other hand to start the saw and hold it to the iron half a dozen inches higher, he knew he had no choice but to ignore the trembling and jerking that were accompanied by hoarse screams that their owner could do nothing to silence. But for all his outward steadiness, inside he was quaking, the father in him crying out with the man he had no choice but to hurt, and hating himself for every second that went by that he hadn't yet finished. When he'd finally cut away enough of a chunk in the middle to free him, his hands started shaking so badly that he dropped the saw when he went to put it down, but he didn't hesitate to turn his attention instead to pressing down against the thickly layered gauze that was already spotted red.

It was only then that he looked back to Tony's face, and felt simultaneously relieved and absolutely terrified at the fact that the cries had tapered away, and while still looking worn to the bone, his features had gone almost entirely lax, as though after the sheer overload of pain, his body had given up on transmitting the signals for it. This was a sure sign of just how tenuously he was holding onto life, and his mind was scrambling to come up with anything else he could possibly do at this juncture when suddenly Tony's radio came loudly to life, startling Gibbs and making Tony flinch at its volume, which was just loud enough for Gibbs to be able to make out the voice coming through.

"_Tony? Are you there?_" It was Abby. Gibbs watched the last of the tension in Tony's body melt away as the sheer relief he himself felt was mirrored in every line on the younger man's face.

"I'm here... Abbs... it's damn good... to hear... your voice."

"_Ditto,_" came the quieter answer, and Gibbs could hear the anxiety in her voice even from where he sat when she continued. "_Tony, you big dummy... why'd you have to go back in there? Why'd you have to go and do something so stupid, huh?_"

Tony laughed a little, then stifled a cough with a tired grimace. "Because... you were here... Abbs... or so... I thought before... your... disappearing... act." He paused, then switched abruptly to a solemnity that scared Gibbs in the exact same way as what he'd said before had, and he quickly realized why. "Thanks... by the... way."

"_For what?_" came the confused question. He watched Tony smile genuinely, but oh so tiredly.

"For... disappearing... can't... tell ya... how... glad I am... you're not down... here... with me... Love you Abbs... you know that... right?" Apparently Abby felt the same dread from everything about that sentence, because she came back sounding more angry and more terrified than Gibbs thought he'd ever heard from her.

"_Don't you start in on your goodbyes Anthony DiNozzo, you're not going to die down there! Do you hear me? Don't you dare –_"

A long, high-pitched whine cut through whatever else was said, and when it finally subsided, only white noise remained, and Gibbs knew what that meant: McGee's equipment, pushed to its absolute max, had finally given way under the pressure. He tried to activate his own radio, and knew even before he heard the same white noise that the prevalence of metal in this area of the rubble would block any regular radio signal from making it through. And there was no damn way he would leave Tony on his own and take pressure off of his wound long enough to put through a transmission outside the space.

They were alone.

After a few seconds, Gibbs reached over and deactivated the comm, leaving them in silence that was only broken by a drawn-out series of groans and spine-tingling screeches from the structure above them, and then from all around them. And even when the worst of it died down, there were other sounds of grinding and shifting that made themselves known, and they were growing louder by the second.

Looking back to Tony, Gibbs knew from the expression on his face exactly what he was thinking, and what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, and so headed him off with a preemptive answer.

"No." Of course, Tony being the naturally stubborn ass he was, went ahead and suggested it anyway.

"You should... go back... the... way... you came... while you still... can..."

"I'm not leaving you here DiNozzo, so just forget it," he bit out, eyes narrowed and every bit as stubborn, almost daring him to try and disagree with him. Which, of course, he did, with a minute, sad shake of his head, and dammit, but he looked so exhausted, so drawn... and utterly resigned, apparently having already signed his own death certificate.

"Go... back... Boss... there's... no reason..."

"There damn well _is_ a reason, Tony," Gibbs interrupted angrily. The sounds had grown to a dull roar now, but he ignored them, held Tony's gaze and took hold of the words that needed to be said, determined to say them before their time could finally, at long last, run out. "After all the bullshit we've gotten through, and that I've put you through all these years, there is nothing you could do or say to move me out of this spot. You are my agent, my friend, and sure as hell the closest thing to family I've got left. I _will not_ leave you here. Do you hear me? Is that understood?"

The noise was almost overpowering by now, and the ground shook beneath them, but Gibbs' attention was solely on Tony, who watched him through glazed, half-lidded eyes, filled now with a different sadness and quiet gratitude as he nodded. "Understood... Gibbs."

The air was split by a final roaring screech, deafening and terrible, and Gibbs had only seconds to drape himself as a shield over Tony's upper body before the delicately balanced rubble and debris above their heads shifted, then came apart.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** ...Man, this past month has been freakin' wild...

Well, now that college has clocked me in the face and enough time has passed that I've stopped seeing double, and now that the very same head cold I gave poor Abby has had its way with me (the irony, I assure you, does not escape me), and I've caught and started to get over pneumonia, here I am with the next, and likely third-last, chapter, written in between classes, mid-terms, and trips to the ER.

That's right... the end is nigh!

xP

Buckets of sugar and spice and everything nice go out to everyone out there who continues to leave such awesome and entertaining reviews, and to all who've added this story to their alerts, pretty sure it's somewhere upwards of 225, give or take... Holy crap, you guys ROCK! :D

Special thanks go out to _shywriter_ and _catsmew,_ who both checked in on me, and kindly reminded me that I needed to get a move on and not keep you guys waiting for too much longer, since I did kinda forget about writing for the past little while. Anyone who's got any sense at all, and/or has been anticipating finding out where that last cliffie would lead will drop by and bake those girls a couple of nice 'Thank you' cakes! :)

All that aside, on to the chapter – I hope you all enjoy, and I look forward to hearing what ya think!

**A/N Part 2**: Has anyone else been having troubles with FanFiction? I've actually posted this several times since the start of last week, but it hasn't been coming up as updated. I've got my fingers crossed it'll work this time round... let me know if you actually got alerts for this chapter, and if the links worked without any trouble. I'm really hoping that error report email thinger I sent to FanFiction tech support paid off...

* * *

When he came to, an indeterminable amount of time later, Gibbs' ears were ringing and his head was pounding in a way that told him even before he felt the trickle of blood making its way through his hair that a piece of something heavy had been responsible for putting him out in the first place. Opening his eyes was a slow and dizzying process, and he couldn't see more than a few inches in front of himself even when he managed it, for the dust in the air that had doubled, if not tripled in thickness. He immediately shallowed his breaths to keep from inhaling too much of it, and struggled against sluggish, likely concussed thought processes to reassess their situation.

Everything remembered from the past few hours came through in mere snatches at first before eventually they lengthened to encompass the drawn-out fight to get down here, the death of the woman who should have been Abby... and those final moments with Tony.

_'Go... back... Boss...'_

_'I _will not_ leave you here.'_

Of all he'd seen and done tonight, that was what came through the clearest – the blood, the quiet breaths, dull green eyes (so tired, filled with more pain than he could stand to see in them), fingers like ice wrapping around his wrist just as he'd thrown himself over top of the younger agent, just above the protruding bar, while debris rained down on them...

...but not enough to crush them, like a cave-in would have, _should _have. Not _nearly_ enough. And if it wasn't a cave-in, then that could only mean...

A beam of light cut through the haze from above making him flinch and grin all at once as he carefully levered himself up into a kneeling position and lifted a hand to shield his eyes so that he could stare up at the hole that had been torn almost all the way through the pile above them, with only a few scraps remaining stubbornly in place. He could hear a myriad of voices trickling down along with the light as a blissful bit of cool night air washed over him, thought he might recognize a few of them as the men he'd been coordinating with earlier.

Help had finally come, they were going to make it. _They had made it_.

So elated that his already spinning head felt even dizzier, Gibbs looked excitedly back to Tony, and immediately felt the grin fall away, his heart lurching up to lodge in his throat, choking him.

Only a slit of Tony's eyes remained visible, their pupils dilated enough to block all but a hair's width of green while they gazed unblinkingly off to the side. The final grip his hand had had on Gibbs' had gone lax and chalk-white lips were parted just enough to pull in the quietest of gasping breaths every few seconds, breaths which came slower still as he watched, horror-stricken and paralyzed. Words that he couldn't bear to say rose to claw through his chest, to set his eyes burning, and his shoulders began to shake.

_Don't do this to me... Please, Tony... I can't take outliving you..._

"Special Agent Gibbs? Can you hear us?"

The sound of the voice brought none of the previous elation, but managed at least to unlock the vice around his throat, though his vision tunneled, and all he could see was Tony, dying – all he could see was another of his family being ripped away from him.

_'...looks like... I've... finally... run out... Boss.'_

Fear, and agony the likes of which he'd felt few times before, ripped through him, his own yelled words barely registering through the overwhelming rush. "WE NEED HELP DOWN HERE, _NOW_!"

_'And what is it you've run out of DiNozzo?'_

Eyes slid shut. The gasping stopped.

_'Al...mosts.'_

_

* * *

_

"Failure" was not a word McGee had ever associated with himself before; no matter what he did, no matter where he went wrong, there was always an answer, a plan B, a back-up that might take a little longer, or be a little harder, but would, in the end, turn the odds in their favor all the same. There'd never been something completely beyond reach, either for himself alone, or especially with the full weight of his team behind him.

Until now.

Now that his equipment had given out at last under the strain of all he'd demanded of it, and Abby was simply sitting there, clutching the mic in a shaking hand while tears coursed down her face, "failure" was all he felt could apply. Nothing else could possibly account for the sheer amount of devastation he saw in her face, nor could it give anything close to an adequate cause for pain that had nothing to do with her hand fighting past all of Ziva's carefully constructed armor to make her shoulders slump and her head bow under its crushing weight.

McGee bit his lip and turned away, crossing his arms tightly over his chest, as though that would shield him from what had happened, was happening, would happen. He'd been unable to keep from hearing the undertone in Tony's words, any more than the other two, and he was losing the internal battle to keep away from the thought he'd been firmly and steadfastly ignoring all night: he probably would never see his friend alive again.

Clamping his hand over his mouth was the only thing that kept him quiet at the thought as he felt himself swept up in memories and regrets, almost enough to drown in. In the midst of the tumult, anger churned, burning a hole in his stomach with its need to lash out at someone, _anyone_ – it didn't matter who, or that it wouldn't change anything.

This shouldn't have happened, none of it; Abby was supposed to have been out of the building before they left for the raid, shouldn't have left a note that would never be read. The raid was supposed to have taken more time, should've kept them away from there until long after the fact... Tony shouldn't be dying, Gibbs shouldn't be ready to die with him, the team shouldn't be falling apart at the seams for all the world to see. After all that they'd survived, after all they'd fought for and through for so long to make it to where they were, to stay together in spite of it all, they shouldn't be allowed to become broken victims of circumstance.

McGee had never put much stock in fate or karma or the belief that good done in the service of others would be repaid in kind, but right then, curling in around his crossed arms as he felt himself begin to crumble at what they seemed powerless to stop, he couldn't help but cry for the injustice of this; for the lives they had all saved, that Tony and Gibbs had saved, all the injustices they'd righted from case to case, they _deserved_ to come through this. With all they had done, they did not deserve the pain they were now faced with, it just wasn't right, it wasn't _fair_.

More than once, Tony had mentioned having nine lives, sometimes as a joke, said with a grin and a devil-may-care cockiness, sometimes as a shield against shock or fear for the sheer overwhelming number of close calls he'd had in his comparatively short life. In keeping with that, one might say he'd long since used the last of those lives, that it was nothing short of a miracle he'd lived as long as he had.

But if there _were_ such a thing as karma, if there was indeed a scale, weighing a person's goodness against their wrongdoings, then nine lives were nowhere near being equal repayment, for either of the men whose survival now hung in the balance, and looked all the more unlikely with every passing second.

"Special Agent McGee?"

The voice came from off to the side, and the only indication he gave that he'd heard it was to turn his head partially in its direction while he fought to bring himself back to the present... no matter how hopeless it had begun to feel. The speaker cleared his throat uncomfortably, undeniably aware of the jagged tension that surrounded the trio. With how they all must look to the outsider right then, how could he not be?

"The other rescue team is approaching the approximate coordinates pulled in from the GPS lock. They... we, thought you'd all want to know – we should reach them in a few minutes."

If the man had been uncomfortable before, he was almost literally squirming now as three pairs of eyes, each filled with the same desperate hope, stared at him; in the wake of that final transmission, they'd all but forgotten that Abby, before insisting on getting to speak to Tony, had taken a quick moment to input the key codes to her previously bullet-proof firewalls to finally grant them access to the GPS locator in Tony's tac equipment. The coordinates had been at best a computer-driven estimate because of the wreckage's interference, and none of the three had been too hopeful when they'd handed them off to the other team that they would prove to be useful as quickly as they needed to. Like everything else that night, they'd expected it to get them nowhere.

So when the rescue worker turned to lead the way over to the secondary site, about a hundred yards from the site that had claimed the lives of all but one of Gibbs' engineers, whom they'd retrieved and sent to the hospital an hour ago, the three of them were right on his heels for the walk. They spoke not a word to each other or their guide on the way over, and held their collective breaths as they watched the crews work their way down. The wreckage screamed and groaned and shook in protest, and the three didn't breathe again until, with a final spine-tingling screech that had nearly everyone covering their ears, the last cluster of twisted metal and concrete was ripped up and away by the crane, and the workers were climbing back into the hole, shinning their lights down into one opening in particular.

Sorrow morphed rapidly into joy when the men reported seeing movement below and called down to Gibbs, then just as swiftly into horror at the words, raw and panic-stricken, that erupted as a roar in response.

"WE NEED HELP DOWN HERE, _NOW_!"

In the frenzy of movement that followed, the opening was quickly torn open, widening it enough so that the stretcher, attached to the end of the crane, could be lowered down, followed closely by two paramedics, hastily outfitted with harnesses and ropes to hold them. All three team members were mute as they listened to shouted instructions and stats, almost in a trance-like state as they watched the stretcher lifted back out, a man strapped to it with a paramedic straddling it, rhythmically squeezing the air bag attached to the tube that had been inserted down the man's throat.

Gibbs and the second paramedic returned to the surface just after them, but for the moment their gazes could not be moved away from the man, clothes torn, bloody, so still, and as pale as any corpse they spent their careers photographing and collecting... Tony, their Tony.

Dependably goofy, loyal to a fault, unshakeable Tony... with no blood left to loose, no air that wasn't being forced into his lungs by someone else, no last minute epiphanies, no more goodbyes that could be said...

Nine lives to spare – no jokes, no deflections. Just a handful of second chances... and so many times they'd been needed, so many that had to have been used up without anyone really stopping to think of it. Without any thought as to what they would do when the time came there were none left to fall back on.

_'Did you save any for tonight, Tony?'_ McGee thought blandly, mouth as dry as sand, limbs leaden and numb.

He barely registered following Gibbs and the stretcher, Abby and Ziva beside him every step of the way. Everything had become muted, fading to the background around the carried surface which bore a man, too broken to be able to look at without crying, into the back of an ambulance. Paramedics swarmed into the vehicle, and they were yelling, and machines were screeching, and the man in the center of them all (_Tony... Jesus, that's Tony..._) was seizing, and it was like a distant dream, a nightmare that they could neither wake up from nor comprehend...

Then the ambulance's doors were slammed shut and it was speeding away, gone before they could realize it was going, and Tony gone with it.

And people were crowding in around the four of them, talking, asking questions, demanding answers, all concerned gazes and probing hands... but now that Tony had left, all that McGee and the other two could see was Gibbs – who'd faced war and loss all too many times – as he staggered and dropped to his knees, biting his fist, armor for the moment gone, like Ziva's. His eyes were squeezed shut as the pain of the encroaching loss, which he'd shut out longer than any of them had managed, at last overtook him.

It was a sight that none could have realized just how much they'd depended on never seeing, for this was the pain of a man who cared deeply for another... and who believed that person to be lost. He believed _Tony_ was lost.

And if Gibbs believed it, what hope was there to be had?

McGee shook and swayed, and sat himself on the ground, tuning out the voices and their questions, watching listlessly as Ziva continued to stare off down the street, statuesque in her grief, and Abby wrapped her arms around Gibbs as tightly as she could.

With a choked-off sob, McGee hung his head.

_'Please Tony, tell me you saved just one more life for tonight.'_

_

* * *

_

The trip to Bethesda was an incomprehensible blur, and before he knew it, McGee was wandering past curtained cubicles in the ER, on his way to the elevator that would take him up to sit with Abby in the surgical waiting room. His ribs had been X-rayed and confirmed as simply bruised, his arm put in a sling to rest his shoulder, and heavier duty pain medication was making him more tired than he thought he could be while still being able to move under his own power. After all that had happened in only a handful of hours, he was surprised he could still move at all, but was more than relieved to be able to leave on his own two feet, and to be free to go where he wanted... which was nowhere but the chair beside Abby's until Tony made it out of surgery.

He refused to put an 'if' in that sentence.

A clattering of upended medical supplies drew his attention to a curtain at the far end of the ward from himself, and he frowned and began walking towards it, walking quicker when a familiar voice became loud enough to rise over the din of the other patients.

"I said _no_!"

"Ms. David, please _sit down_!"

Rallying enough fumes of energy to sprint the last of the distance, McGee pushed through the curtain to see Ziva glaring fiercely at an equal parts flustered and frustrated nurse, who held a syringe in one hand and a chart, in front of her like a shield, in the other.

"That's _Special Agent_ David," he snapped, stepping resolutely between Ziva and the other woman, taking up the glare. "Now what's going on here?" The question was directed at any who would answer, and both did, frustrated, and at the same time.

"She needs surgery to fix that hand, and -"

"-I told her that I would _not_ submit to an operation until we receive news on Tony's condition. Point of fact, I _refuse_ to be rendered unconscious until we are able to at least know if he will..."

Ziva's sentence became strangled towards the end, and trailed off, but for the moment McGee looked only to the nurse, doing his best to be imploring. "Our friend, another agent on our team, is in surgery right now. Can't the hand be put off until he's out?"

"If she doesn't take this slot, I can't say when another will open up. And with the number of breaks, and their positioning, there isn't much I can do for the pain if she ends up on the waiting list for a few days," the woman responded with an exasperated sigh.

Though hating the idea of Ziva hurting for longer than she absolutely needed to, he more than understood why she wanted to wait, knew that he would want the same thing if he were in her shoes, and so stood his ground.

"But she _could_ afford to wait a little longer, without any long-term consequences? If you brace her hand, and give her what you can to help manage the pain?"

The nurse sighed again, but in resignation, and nodded, leaving for a brief moment and returning with a brace tucked under her arm, and a new syringe and a small vial, which she swiftly withdrew a dosage from.

"This should help some, but not enough for any significant level of comfort," she said as she administered the shot, then went about securing the brace. "Keep this arm elevated, and the hand wrapped in cold compresses. It should keep the swelling down, and as long as you're not trying to do anything with it, there shouldn't be any long-term nerve damage." That done, she went about collecting the supplies scattered on the floor, speaking with returned calm patience as she went. "As soon as you've gotten news on your friend, check yourself in immediately at the nurse's station in the surgical ward on the fifth floor. I'll leave word to put you in the very next available spot when you do."

As she straightened, she acknowledged their quiet thanks with another nod, then turned and strode away, and McGee turned to Ziva, seeing in her steady gaze her gratefulness at his intervention, and knowing that nothing needed to be said. After what they'd come away from that night, help was not something either of them had it in them to begrudge giving, or receiving. Embarrassment over perceived dependence, if it really needed to, could come later. Right now, they needed each other equally, and in too great amounts for it to matter.

They exited the curtain together, and he carried on towards the elevator, careful to keep even with her tired stride the entire way.

When the elevator doors opened to the fifth floor, they exited swiftly and moved towards the closed door directly across from them, having been told the number by Abby before she'd gone up a few hours ago. Ziva's good hand was reaching to turn the handle when the other elevator dinged, and they turned to look as the doors opened to admit a scrubs-clad Gibbs to the hallway. A small patch of hair had been shaved from the side of his head to allow for stitches and a taped piece of gauze, the cuts to his hands and face cleaned, the brace on his knee a bump under the scrubs.

He looked far more composed than the last time they'd seen him as he used his crutches to maneuver to stand beside them, though his eyes gave away all of what he couldn't fight against. But they said not a word, knowing better by now than to comment on things they weren't meant to be able to notice, and Ziva opened the door, the three moving as one into the room. Once they'd rearranged the chairs into a closer grouping, they settled in around a tear-streaked Abby, and resigned themselves to waiting, as they always seemed forced to do.

Hours more went by, and the sun rose beyond the windows as they sat, talking in spurts, but for the most part silent. Just after dawn, Ducky and Palmer arrived, bearing coffees and bagels and harrowing tales of their fighting their way onto a military transport to get back to DC as soon as Director Sheppard had called to inform them of what had happened. Though none could quite stomach food right then, the coffee was gratefully accepted and drunk in short order as the team filled the other two in on the details of the night, a grave silence that not even Ducky could break settling over them once more as the story drew closed back in the present time, where hours had passed with no news, good or bad, forthcoming.

It was late in the morning, and all pretense of patience wearing dangerously thin by the time the door to their room was opened and a young man, wearing sweat-soaked scrubs and a haggard face stepped in, his surgical mask clutched tightly in the hand not on the handle. Six gazes locked on his, breathless and searchingly, and his lips tightened into a thin, grim line as he silently closed the door behind him, visibly steeling himself for what was to come.

Unable to look away, NCIS's finest waited, this one last time.

Waited for the words that would leave a piece of them shattered forever.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N**: Well, this was by far THE hardest chapter to write out of this entire story... or rather, to decide on which way to write it, and where to leave it off for the coming finale.

When I first started this fic, I thought I had it all figured out down to the last bit of punctuation, but I've gotten quite varied and strong responses to this situation I've put our agents in, and as such have had to do some serious reworking. I kept jumping back and forth between whether to go with what was the most asked for, and what was realistic, and in the end, what follows is what came of it – sorry for it being a bit of a short in-between-er after the almost three week wait, but I hope it's what you guys (or at least most of you :P) were looking for.

As always, heartfelt thanks goes out to all reviewers and silent lurkers – you guys always give me something to look forward to in what free time I do have, and make college schedules a hell of a lot less aggravating :)

Would love to hear what you all think – one more chapter to go after this!

* * *

Doing what they did in their line of work, namely running towards flying bullets rather than away, imagining what their end might entail was not only common place, but expected. No one said anything about it out loud, of course, but if you weren't thinking about it at one point or another, then you were either an optimist or naive, both of which were dangerous things to be as federal agents.

Tony had never given it much direct thought, largely because, on any given day, he tended to stumble into more than enough possibilities to satisfy any curiosity he might ever have had. He did, however, dream, whether he wanted to or not.

There were variations in how his subconscious imagined it'd come to it – different people or situations that turned against him, decisions made that would turn out to be the wrong ones, freak accidents that may or may not have anything at all to do with his job. He'd even dreamt once of a grand finale worthy of Hollywood, complete with heroic final words, selfless sacrifice, and going into the bright, white light.

What was a constant though was the thing that always stung the most, that always left him feeling more empty and aching than he'd ever admit, more than anything else ever could: he always seemed to die alone.

Working with his team, spending hours talking, arguing, laughing with them, often seeing more of them than their own families did, he managed to shake it off most of the time, but that lonely premonition was always waiting for him afterward, whenever the latest case was closed, the last of the paperwork filed, everyone going their separate ways for the night. He had let himself grow accustomed to their company, coming to look forward to being back at work whenever he had a few days off to burn, but those dreams had long been proof enough that letting himself need them would only do more harm than good.

Self-pity never really came into it though, because it only made sense – he'd spent the first half of his life hated and ignored, and then the second half keeping people at arm's length, making a joke out of anything that could give too much of himself away, and running off to start over someplace else whenever the jokes stopped cutting it. So being alone at his end seemed only logical, no matter how afraid of it he was. He'd brought it on himself, with years of hard work.

With a deep breath in, and a sighing exhale to banish the introspection, Tony settled deeper into the driver's seat of the car he'd grown up imagining himself owning, ever since seeing his first episode of Magnum P.I. The 1981 Ferrari's cream-colored leather interior and blazing red exterior were as beautiful as they would have been fresh off the assembly line, even cast in the fading light of the sun as it slowly slid beneath the ocean's surf on the horizon. He grinned contentedly and stroked a hand over the dash, his fingers trailing down to rest on the bottom of the steering wheel. This car was everything he'd ever wanted to be – sleek, powerful, attractively reckless, free... wanted by many, treasured by the few who had it.

Once upon a time, when he was still young and inexperienced enough to think he and his father could get along, Tony had made up a game, vrooming his way into their house's main floor office and asking his father what kind of car he thought Tony would be, were he not a little boy. Being in the middle of a stock report and his third tumbler of whiskey, he'd obliged by answering that Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. would most certainly be a taxi cab, which never stopped moving, cost too much, and was always blaring its horn about one thing or another, almost always getting in the way of other traffic.

Tony didn't try to include him in any more games after that.

Even without turning to look back up the beach he was parked on to see the beach house he'd spent only one summer in as a child before it was sold it to a buyer who had it torn down, he knew he was dreaming, and wondered idly if it would stay a good one, or take the more morbid turn. Of course, if he were going to pick any place to practice dying, going in this beauty was certainly the most appealing option; no terrorists, sociopaths, bullets, bumbling mistakes, or gut-turning tragedies... what's not to like?

He was alone, which was of course no surprise, though the radio would kick in with the odd garbled sound every now and again, usually snatches of words he couldn't really make out or muted rushes of wordless noise. There was a small itch in the back of his mind that somehow the words and the noise meant something, but the meaning escaped him like fleeting deja vu whenever he tried to focus on it, so he tried to ignore it.

For the moment, he let himself revel in feeling warm and comfortable, so relaxed he was nearly in a lethargic haze. Disconnected might be a word for it, but in a good way, as though he'd just finished a week of shifts from Hell, and was in the process of grabbing a long, hot shower followed by an ice cold beer, with his customarily overloaded pizza. There was a peace here that felt as though it'd been hard won, and he was more than happy to indulge in it entirely, not having it in himself to care where things would go from here – in this moment, he felt great, better than, and that was more than enough.

There was no denying, however, that although he knew he was dreaming, this time felt different, more important somehow, that importance worming its way through his contentment until gradually he found himself frowning as he continued to sit and watch the waves come in. The more he thought about it, the more a sense of urgency took root, spoiling the calm of the ocean view and the flawlessness of the car he sat in. The reason for these impressions still eluded him though, and he fought to shake them off, wanting to enjoy the setting for as long as he could, knowing it couldn't be long now before he would wake up, or the scene would change.

At that moment, the radio came once more to life, and where once the words had been scattered and indiscernible, the voices foreign, their volume and frequency began to increase, and the voices began to take on names, people he knew well, people who'd never appeared in dreams like this one before.

"_... met the young man... operated... quite a bit of damage to... but they don't know you like we do, dear boy..._"

Ducky – he recognized him instantly. But the tone of his voice... it'd been years since he'd sounded like that, and that last time had been when –

The next voice interrupted the thought, which disappeared though a sick feeling that he couldn't place lingered. He swallowed hard around it, and went back to listening.

"_...always been good to me... said you probably won't... can't imagine what it'd be like without..._"

Palmer? What was he doing in his dream? And when had he started to sound so grown up? He sounded too much like Ducky...

"_...and then they said you went... just before... you _do_ that? You shouldn't be... for _me_... please, Tony, you can't... you have to..._"

"Abby," he whispered, staring at the radio and wanting more than anything to be able to hold her and tell her that he'd fix whatever it was he'd done wrong, that it would be all right, wishing as well that he even knew what it was that had her sounding so heartbroken. McGee's voice followed hers, not sounding much more composed.

"_...leave to take her... back later... better hold on... don't know what to... not ready for this... never thought..._"

A sudden sharp pang in his stomach almost doubled him over, but was gone just as quickly, leaving him confused and panting as he pressed a hand to the site, and felt that same urgency from before begin to grow. The interior of the car began to grow hot and stuffy, the once pleasant warmth now making his skin itch and crawl, and he put down the convertible's roof and windows in search of fresh air, but the breeze that should've been coming off the ocean was nonexistent.

"_...I will not leave... could it come to this?... trust that you know... never meant... always believe time is on our side..._"

Ziva. Now _her_ he'd dreamed about before, usually in a far different, more pleasant context. There was nothing like that in her voice now, though – instead it was tired, so utterly worn out, filled with regret and sorrow so tangible it brought an all knew level of pain, just hearing it.

Yes, Tony knew he was dreaming, but he knew for certain that he'd definitely never experienced anything like this before. So why now? What _was_ this?

Sensation began coming in faster spurts, powerful and unpredictable, from the white hot poker in his side to a full-bodied, bone-deep cold, and back again, alongside a growing pressure in his chest and a weight inside his throat. The ocean's breeze, though doing nothing to cool him, seemed to now carry with it another sound, a beeping, faint and infrequent, sporadic in its speeds and completely out of place in a situation that was already spinning out of his control.

He shook and his chest heaved, his hands grasping for relief, but at a loss as to where to go. For the first time in a long time he felt helplessness take over, blurring his beautiful surroundings into a mess of hues as he felt the weight press harder inside his throat, making him gag and begin to choke.

As a general rule, he never owned up to fear - not during, or after the fact, especially if there was anyone there to bear witness. Right then however, there was not another soul in sight, and he felt absolutely justified in admitting that he was a little scared... Jesus, was he scared.

When would this dream end? This had already lasted too long, far longer than usual, and all he wanted was to wake up, and go to work. All he wanted was to be around the family he pretended not to need like he needed the air he was now being denied – he wanted to not be as alone as he was now, as he was every time.

Wake up, please, wake up... wakeupwakeupwakeUP...

"_Tony, can you hear me?_"

Gibbs' voice was like a gunshot next to his ear and he gasped, going rigid. After a moment, he tried for a full breath, gagged again, and squeezed his eyes shut, silently begging the voice to come back, if for nothing else than a distraction from this slow suffocating. It didn't disappoint. And unlike the others', every word came through, solid, and unmoving, a rock in the middle of this hurricane.

"_At this point, I have no right to be giving you an order, so I won't. All I'll do is ask, and hope to God this gets through to you._" There was a grip on his arm then that felt so solid, so real and reassuring that he would've looked for a hand to have appeared there in the car with him, had he been able to concentrate on more than just listening, which he did with every ounce of will he possessed. "_They've told us there's nothing more they can do, that you probably won't last the night. I'm asking... I'm begging you, prove them wrong._" There was a choked-off laugh then, and the grip tightened. "_If ever there was a time for you to outdo me for being a stubborn bastard, it's now._" The sliver of humor disappeared, and Gibbs' voice dropped to a whisper. "_Please, Tony, just... stay._"

More so than at any other part of this, he was grateful beyond words that this was only a dream, because otherwise this would undoubtedly be the worst moment in his life, hearing Gibbs sound so lost, hearing this man who asked for nothing ask this of him... and having to say that he didn't think he could do it.

The dull roar of rushing blood that had begun as background noise rose to drown out anything else that Gibbs may have said, and he fought fruitlessly for calm with the loss of that brief anchor, his only comfort being that it _had_ to be near to ending. How much more of this could there be?

It was only when the faint beeping turned into screeching, when the ache in his chest became a twisting knife, when the heat in the car grew into an inferno around him as his choking turned into convulsing that a shattering question made itself known: what if this was real?

But by then it was too late, and everything reached a deafening crescendo... and then began to fade, trickling away into a warmth even deeper and ever more welcoming than before as his eyes fluttered back open.

He was blinded when they did, and even then couldn't help a slight smirk.

_I'll be damned... there _is_ a white light._


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** So, needless to say I apologize for just how long it took for me to get this completed and posted – I won't bore any of you with the long details, but this past little while has been one of the toughest times in years, and the delay in updating couldn't be helped.

But, at long last, here it is: the conclusion to another story. Thanks so, SO much to all of the absolutely wonderful reviews you guys have left me, making this my most successful story I've ever posted on here – I love you all, you've made writing even more fun than it already was!

And special thanks to shywr1ter, who once again, in checking to make sure I was still alive and kicking, reminded me to get my butt in gear, and not keep you guys hanging any longer :)

So, without further ado, R&R and enjoy!

P.S: I implore everyone reading to read all the way through, before they decide whether or not it was the ending they wanted :P

P.P.S: I am certainly willing, if the interest is there, to come up with an alternate ending, to deal with the other side of the picket line, who had a different take on how this one should turn out. Let me know!

* * *

The Sedan crept along the road, sunlight glinting off tinted windows which hid the passengers within from surrounding vehicles. It was one car in a procession of many, moving slowly but surely through the streets of DC on a route they all knew well, to a place none had seen since that one fateful night, a night that none would forget.

Two weeks had gone by, and the investigation into the bombing of the NCIS building was only now coming to a close, the details having at last been sorted through and organized into a report that the survivors and most every agent had all read, whether or not their clearance levels would normally have allowed for it.

No terrorist group had lain claim to the attack, no indications of any parties responsible being picked up in the regular chatter or through the usual informants, all initial attempts at leads at first going nowhere. Ultimately, it was a dead woman that led them to the answers they sought, the recovery of her body and the analysis of her 911 call pointing them in the direction of everything they needed to know.

Born Hooriya Ganim, she and her twin brother, Muhannad Ganim, had been raised by their parents in Iran for the first eighteen years of their lives before immigrating to the US on student visas to attend university, Hooriya for her law degree, Muhannad for a dual major in bio-chemistry and mechanical engineering. Both graduated with honors before applying for and receiving their citizenship papers, after which they were each hired into government positions, the brother in research and development, the sister in the district attorney's office, where she met and married her husband, attorney Salim Kouri.

Due to the high-profile nature of their respective employments, each had been put through thorough screening and background checks, and it was found their only communication to their home country was with their parents, who'd elected to stay in Iran rather than follow after their children. Three years after the twins' graduations, a Navy fighter pilot was sent on a mission to bomb suspected enemy strongholds in a village near the capital. He missed his target. Whether through navigation equipment malfunctioning, or dire human error, he dropped his payload instead on a village of civilians five miles south of the intended target. Nearly two hundred innocent Iranians were killed, the parents of Hooriya and Muhannad among them.

In the wake of the deaths, several agents from NCIS were dispatched to investigate the incident, and eventually deemed it to have been an accident spawned by equipment malfunction, the conclusion in the report stating that the bombing was along the lines of, "a terrible tragedy, but ultimately blameless."

When these final determinations were made known, Muhannad, according to his friends and coworkers, became obsessed with the idea that it was a cover-up, that the government had ordered bombs dropped without knowing or caring where their 'enemy' was, and that the NCIS agents had been coerced into looking the other way in their investigation. For a time, he used his position in his firm to protest the injustice, and demand the truth, eventually leading to his being fired on the grounds of mental instability, after which he disappeared from sight.

Until he resurfaced with his government ID, tampered with to be updated to the current time codes, and strode into the NCIS building with specially tailored, undetectable explosives stitched into the lining of his satchel.

According to his cell phone records, he'd called his sister en route to his attack – whether to justify his actions, or to seek forgiveness for the lives he was going to take in his act of retaliation, they would never know for sure. Whatever it was he'd said, it'd brought Hooriya Kouri to NCIS, her DA's office ID getting her into the building, and it'd allowed her the chance to make the call that had saved so many lives.

Saved so many... but so many were lost, regardless. Too many families were called that night, to hear the worst possible news, news that had deposited a heavy weight on all those who'd survived and even those who hadn't been there that night, a weight which they bore still.

It was that same weight that pressed upon those inside the Sedan, that had a stranglehold over their voices and left them mute, creating a silence that would not be broken save by the humming of the engine as they continued along in the long procession towards the site of the bombing. None of the three inside that car had spoken a word since they'd gotten in, had barely even looked at each other, or anywhere else besides straight ahead through the windshield to track the car ahead of them. Each were dressed in pristine black, McGee in a new suit and tie bought especially for today, both of which gave him a harder look when paired with his clenched fists and pale face. Gibbs was in the same suit he'd worn to Kate's funeral, looking just as uncomfortable in it now as he had then, only now with an undercurrent of weariness that hadn't been there before, though of course it would go unmentioned.

Ziva, with Abby's help that morning, had worked around the black cast that enveloped her hand from near the tips of her fingers to mid-forearm to slip into a modest, but figure-hugging black dress. She'd even allowed the Goth to pin her hair back into a loose bun, though she'd insisted on handling her own make-up one-handed.

When she'd gone out yesterday to pick out something to wear, and had found this dress, she'd very nearly been reduced embarrassingly to tears when she'd tried it on with some difficulty and thought immediately, instinctively, of how entertaining the look on Tony's face would be, were he to see her in it, how much fun it would be to pretend not to see the way he looked at her, while he pretended to believe her attention was elsewhere. That had always been their game after all, and they'd played it well for years.

She hadn't so much as glanced at the price tag before bringing it to the counter and shoving her credit card at the cashier, retrieving it without a word and folding the garment bag carefully over her arm before stalking back out to where Abby had been waiting in her car. Thankfully, the scientist hadn't asked her why she'd held on to the bag all the way back to her apartment. Likely, she'd already known the reason, words were simply unnecessary.

Between them all, there wasn't a single one who'd slept easy these two weeks, who hadn't shown up at their temporary offices for paperwork, reports, and debriefings looking frayed. No one claimed to be 'fine', because they knew the others would know they were lying, but especially, no one was called out on any of their new habits - if someone was seen lingering over team photographs in the middle of the day, or making calls they knew couldn't be answered just to hear the voice on the machine's recording, or catching themselves setting aside food for an empty place at the table on take-out nights, well, then... it was understood that you just needed to look the other way.

After picking up McGee and then Ziva, Gibbs had gotten them to the designated start point for the procession, and for the first time in his career, found he couldn't object to formalities and ceremony; a police escort had been arranged, cordoning off their route to allow them unobstructed passage, and an honor guard marched at the very front, the Director's car following behind them. All the way through the city were flashing lights and precisely timed steps, quietly held flags and bowed heads from the officers they passed, and Gibbs, always the first to cringe at bureaucratic solemnity knew that this was anything but.

All told, sixty-five agents and three civilians had been lost that night, leaving a sea of mourning parents, friends, siblings, spouses, and children. And they deserved every bit of the respect and remembrance they were being shown here today.

All too quickly, their progress came to a halt, all cars pulling to a stop on the opposite side of the street from their destination. Director Sheppard, and the directors of several other agencies followed immediately behind the honor guard in crossing the street to traverse the isle laid down in the middle of rows upon rows of chairs filled with the grieving. The agents from the other cars mingled and followed close behind, claiming the seats reserved for them near the front, all eyes turning to the raised podium that stood as close to the cleared and leveled ground zero as they were yet allowed. Positioned on stands in front of it were sixty-eight laminate pictures, the smiling faces of those they knew, those they lost, looking out over the gathered masses as the speeches began.

Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder between McGee and Ziva, with Ducky and Palmer next to them, Gibbs fought along with them to remain composed throughout the proceedings, managing well enough until the list of and tribute to the fallen began. He was sure he'd ground down most of his teeth by the end of it, even with the occasional tap of a finger to his bad knee to distract himself.

All around him tears were being shed for the cruelty that had brought them there, that had taken their loved ones from them, and while he understood and supported the respect being payed, the longer it went on, the more his calm eroded, and the more desperately he wished for the privacy of his basement, and the comfort of the boat and the hard liquor that resided there. With each word spoken, and each agent acknowledged, he became more and more aware of the raw ache in his chest that the last two weeks had done little to dull. Not for the first time, he wished that Muhannad Ganim had survived the destruction, that one of the bombs he'd built hadn't detonated prematurely, killing him before he could make his escape. Apart from wanting that man to be made to listen to the lives of each of his victims, he wished more than anything that he was there to be made to pay in full for what he'd done here, to be on the receiving end of this corrosive coil of anger and pain that ate at Gibbs' insides whenever he allowed himself the time to think of it, which of course he couldn't help but do in this place.

Muhannad Ganim had gotten off easy by comparison, and the injustice of it was very nearly unbearable.

A light touch on his shoulder pulled him from his churning thoughts, and it took him a moment to register that the ceremony had drawn to a close, and the rows of chairs had begun to empty around him. He looked up at Ducky, whose hand maintained its touch, warm and steady, and saw reflected in the older doctor's eyes everything he himself felt, exactly as he was feeling it, and likewise in the pained gazes of the other three. For a long moment the group remained in worn silence, until Gibbs stood and led the way back into the isle behind the last of the crowd, posture stiff as a board as the team afforded one last glance at the pictures, each turning quickly for the exit without allowing themselves to focus on any familiar faces.

They were the last to reach the gate, and were met there by Director Sheppard, who extended a hand that Gibbs shook, her gaze all-too sympathetic for his comfort.

"It's good to see you well, Jethro," she said, eyes drifting intermittently between his knee and the side of his head, where a patch of new hair was growing now that the stitches had been removed. She gave a small smile. "Looks like you're healing as fast as you always have." He nodded, but otherwise didn't comment. He barely kept his teeth from grinding again when her eyes and tone grew even softer. "How's Abby?"

"Good, better – the bug she was fighting before all this was pretty nasty, took even longer to go away after, but she's tough. She'd have been here, if she could, but she... couldn't," he finished haltingly, hoping Jenny would know to let it be, hoping she already knew enough to know not to push just now, to know why she just shouldn't.

He felt some of the tension leave his body when the Director simply nodded in understanding, and shook each of their hands before wishing them well, asking them to pass along her regards before she turned to head back to her car.

Their group was on their way back to their own respective cars when they were approached by a young man with dark hair and and tan skin, a sleeping boy, no more than a few years old, held securely against his chest. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot as though he'd been crying, but his jaw was set determinedly when he came to stop beside them, and looked to Gibbs.

"Agent Gibbs?" he asked, his accent faint, but still discernible. Gibbs nodded, and the man shifted his son to his left arm to shake his hand. "I am Salim Kouri. I am told you... you were with my wife when she..."

Salim choked on the rest of the sentence, swallowing hard and looking away for a moment to collect himself. When he looked back to him, the lines around his eyes and mouth were more visible for his struggle to not fall apart, but Gibbs did him the courtesy of keeping a level gaze, and waiting for him to be able to speak again, while trying not to remember the condition of this man's wife at the time of her death. It was one of a few things he'd devoted plenty of time to not thinking of these last two weeks.

"Did she suffer?" was the question Salim finally managed, and for a moment Gibbs wasn't sure how to answer – a lie may reassure him, perhaps soften part of the blow, but the truth was that she had, most definitely. And maybe a lie would only make light of a woman that deserved better than that. And so the decision was made for him.

"She was in a lot of pain, when I found her," he admitted quietly, gaze never wavering even as he watched a part of this young man break. He straightened his back even further then, and squared his shoulders, virtually standing at attention. "But she was strong to the end, and what she died trying to do... Mr. Kouri, it was an honor to have known her, for even those few minutes, and it is a privilege to meet her family now." The mix of pride, and love, and agony the shone in the man's expression at that was one that Gibbs knew too well, and one that hurt to have reflected back at him.

Handing over his card with an invitation to call him when he was ready to collect his wife's belongings, now that the investigation was through and they'd been released from evidence, he shook the man's hand again, and the others watched with him, as silent as they'd been throughout the exchange, as the widower returned to his car, head held high despite the grief that haunted him.

By the time the three had seen Ducky and Palmer off, and gotten back in their own car and back onto the highway, it was late enough that there wasn't really any time to spare for each to go home and change first, since Ziva was very nearly late for her appointment at the hospital. Given the severity of the breaks to her hand, and the fact that when she'd passed on immediate treatment it'd taken three days to get her the surgery she'd needed, the surgeon who'd taken care of her had instituted mandatory X-rays once a week, to ensure everything was healing properly and no damage had been missed.

Gibbs tried to see it as a good thing that she'd voiced not a word in protest to the additional annoyance and the assertion that she would not be allowed to drive herself, only calmly and quietly accepting a ride from the lead agent twice now, when it was offered. The truth was that he was worried about her, though of course he wouldn't admit it – she just needed time, they all did, to come back from what had happened. It couldn't be done overnight, all they could do was be patient and be there for each other whenever and wherever they could. Hopefully, that would be enough.

They walked into the Bethesda with a few minutes to spare, and Ziva checked in at the front desk, and then was given a form and directions to the lab a few floors up. The three caught the next available elevator, and strode to the nurse's station when they got there, somewhat startling the young nurse on duty with their collective dress and demeanor, though she recovered quickly, and filled out the needed paperwork before informing them of the wait, and lending Ziva a gown and pair of scrub pants for her to change into. The two men picked the nearest set of chairs while Ziva went to the ladies room down the hall.

The thoughts of each unavoidably strayed to the ward on the floor bellow them, to the room where they'd all spent the night two weeks ago, hoping for a miracle through long hours of waiting, only to be told that that miracle wouldn't be coming. And what came after that...

Suddenly too restless for waiting, Gibbs stood and declared a need for coffee, blatantly ignoring the all-too knowing look on McGee's face as the younger agent nodded and watched him head for the stairway.

Once there, he paused to lean up against the closed door, trying and failing to settle his thoughts into something resembling rationality. When it became clear it was useless, he looked down the stairs, then up, deciding after a second's stillness that up would do just fine. Mindful of his knee, and his need to make his wandering last as long as possible, he kept his pace slow, not bothering to really keep track of the floors as he passed them.

At first, he counted the stairs as his feet touched them – ten... twenty-five... fifty – then he gave up even on that, allowing himself to focus simply on the act of one foot after the other, up one step, then another, and another, trying to allow himself to be lulled into the monotony of the activity. He should have known better than to think it would work.

Like every other time since that night, now that he was on his own and there was nothing else for him to distract himself with, all he kept coming back to was one moment two weeks ago.

After the surgeon had broken the news to them, he'd led the group immediately to Tony's room in the ICU, taking his leave and leaving them with heartfelt apologies that there'd been nothing more that he could do. The rest of the team had been through, saying their goodbyes or whatever it was they'd felt they needed to say, each emerging with singular devastation written across their faces, and then suddenly it was Gibbs' turn, and he was sitting next to a bed which supported a heavily bandaged shell that looked sickeningly similar to, yet entirely unlike his friend, trying his best to be able to think above the obtrusive whooshing of the respirator and the achingly slow beeps from the heart monitor. And he didn't remember reaching out his hand, but then he was speaking lowly, and he was holding on to the arm closest to him so tightly that a part of him worried about bruises, but only a little part, because the rest of him was certain he'd crumble if he loosened his grip in the slightest.

Funny, how at the time what he was saying felt so important, and yet now he couldn't really remember what it was he'd said exactly, only that he'd pleaded with a dying man who couldn't even hear him to do the impossible.

Then his memory became a blur of panic – alarms were blaring, the heart-monitor's beeps frantic, shrill, and then he was being hauled out of the room and held back by an orderly and a nurse. He couldn't hear himself yelling, but he could feel his lungs and throat burning from the force of it. He couldn't feel himself struggling, but he could feel their hands keeping him away from where he needed to be, able only to watch, terrified, through the room's glass panels as the body on that bed convulsed so violently, then became so still...

His feet stumbled, bringing him to a halt as he clutched the railing, the memory overwhelming him, leaving his heart pounding and stomach twisting as he gasped quietly and struggled to get a hold of himself. It was neither the time, nor the place for this, and once he was able to reaffirm that fact in his head, he once again became aware of his surroundings. Looking up at the door on the next landing, he decided instantly that this would be a good place to leave the stairs behind, and jogged up the last couple of steps to do just that.

It took only a moment to reorient himself once he stepped back into the bright fluorescent lighting typical of any hospital, and he worked on looking as casual as he could, strolling down the hall in his suit. He'd ditched the tie in the car, which helped, and was glad that everyone he passed either didn't notice him, or had better things to be doing than to bother with him. Gradually he slowed, indecisive for a second before grabbing hold of a door handle, turning it and letting himself in, closing it most of the way behind him to shut out the ambient noise from the hall. The quiet sounds of the room calmed him just as surely as the sight of the one occupied bed against the opposite wall, relieving the ache in his chest and the twist in his stomach like nothing else seemed able to.

Still managing to be gentle, even in her sleep, Abby had tucked herself in to curl around Tony's unbandaged left side, ever mindful of avoiding his healing injuries and collection of IV's. With the agent asleep on his back, Abby had draped her leg over one of his, curling her arms around his left shoulder, and tucking her head into the space between them, and Gibbs was again glad for the size of the bed to allow for the extra occupant because he'd swear in front of a judge and jury that Tony's breaths were easier, and his sleeps deeper whenever Abby stayed with him, as always seemed to be the case whenever the agent landed himself in another hospital stay.

He moved quietly towards the chair on the right side of the bed, wincing when his hip accidentally caught the edge of the tray on the table at the foot of the bed, and he suddenly found Abby blinking blearily up at him.

"Gibbs?" she whispered around a yawn.

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you," he whispered back, settling into the chair and scooting quietly closer.

"S'okay. What time is it?"

"Somewhere after six. How was he today?" he said, unable to keep himself from watching him as he slept on peacefully. The same seemed to be true of Abby, it seemed, as her eyes stayed on Tony while she answered, the fingers on one hand idly smoothing back a bit of his hair.

"Not as good as they'd hoped, but a little better than yesterday," she said with a soft smile that bellied the worry in her eyes. "He still doesn't have a whole lot of energy, but his fever broke late this morning, so he managed to keep down the broth, and sit up with some help." She looked to him then, the smile growing a little brighter. "We watched Abbot and Costello on my laptop after lunch, and he was quoting it the entire time."

"Now we definitely know he's getting better," Gibbs said with a quiet laugh, then paused to take in her rumpled appearance. "You should probably head home for the night though, Abbs. You could use a night in a real bed, some breakfast outside of hospital food, a shower..."

"Are you saying I stink, Gibbs?" she whispered with a grin, carefully disentangling herself to stand with a long stretch. He returned the smile, then stood and walked over to give her a warm hug and a kiss on the forehead.

"Definitely. Now go on, I'll stay with him." Giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, she turned for the door, but paused to shoot him a look.

"You'll call me if you need me, right?" she asked seriously, and he was reminded unpleasantly of the few times these last fourteen days where one of the more stubborn infections Tony'd come out of surgery with had left him feverish and disoriented, soothed only by Abby's touch and her soft voice singing quieter versions of her favorite songs in his ear.

"I will," he promised, and after a moment's more scrutiny to apparently decide if she believed him, she nodded and yawned again, then quietly made her exit, shutting the door behind her.

Gibbs returned to his chair then, and when he looked back to the bed, was startled to find half-open green eyes staring back at him. He was wondering if he should speak first, when Tony settled the issue for him.

"I was dreaming again, I think," he said softly, not a whisper, but tired enough that it carried little pitch all the same. Gibbs raised a curious brow.

"About what?"

"I... it's hard to say," Tony answered, voice gaining a little more volume as he blinked himself more awake. "I've had this same one a couple of times, since..." He trailed off uncomfortably, glanced away with a slight frown, then back again. "In the dream I'm in a car, a really nice one. And it starts out okay, and I think I'm happy, then there's voices, and pain, and I start to panic, but then you -" Tony cut himself off abruptly, flushing and looking away again at Gibbs' obvious surprise at being mentioned. He cleared his throat quietly, the shrugged with a small wince. "Forget it. It was just a dream."

By the look on Tony's face, Gibbs doubted it was quite so simple, but was willing to let it go given how exhausted even so little talking had clearly left the younger man.

"Director Sheppard sends her regards," he said wryly, knowing roughly how Tony had felt, justly, about their director since the debacle surrounding La Grenouille. To his credit, Tony's face gave nothing away.

"Does she, now. Well, guess I shouldn't have expected as much as a get-well card, in lieu of a visit," he breathed, shifting slightly with a grimace.

It'd been a long two weeks, right from the moment that Tony had come crashing back into consciousness, fighting the respirator so violently that they'd had to partially sedate him to keep him from tearing it and his many stitches out, allowing him to wake just enough to test pupil reactions and reassure him of where he was, and why before giving him pain medication to let him sleep. Since that point, it'd been a constant rotation of saline and blood transfusions, post-op infection and antibodies. His body was a mess of fractures, bruises and internal bleeding, along with a pierced intestine, and a lacerated kidney. To add to it all, hours of exposure to the thick clouds of smoke and dust had played hell with his plague-scarred lungs, the resulting swelling and fluid build-up being enough to stop his breathing like it did, right before their rescue. Without enough pain medication, he couldn't sleep. With the full amount needed to dull the pain, days went by where he was so lethargic he could barely keep his eyes focused, whenever he managed to stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time.

Tony was facing a long and difficult recovery, but he was _alive_, a wonder that never ceased to amaze and thrill his team, and be the only thing that kept their recently developed habits in check, no matter how much he complained whenever the burly Nurse Gordon, Tony's least favorite but most constant caregiver, was in charge of changing his dressings.

Speaking of which. "So. How was Nurse Gordon today?" Gibbs asked, looking for an easy conversation to break the silence with. Predictably, Tony scowled.

"As cold-handed as always. And the bastard confiscated my back-scratcher, convinced I was using it to scratch at the stitches. Which are doing well, according to the sadist that handled the cleaning and debriding today." The sentence, though delivered flippantly, was highlighted by Tony's hand carefully finding its way to rest over the part of his scrubs top that hid the thick gauze and the previously gaping hole beneath it. The gesture made his heart pound, and it was a conscious effort to push aside the image of Tony as he'd first found him. Flat eyes in an ashen face. Pinned. Motionless. Slipping away...

"This... this was too close. We came too damn close on this one, Tony," Gibbs said, trying and failing to keep the residual fear out of his voice. Tony sobered immediately, his expression as serious as Gibbs had ever seen it.

"I know," he responded quietly, a thousand emotions flitting across his face, too fast for Gibbs to keep track of, some of the more painful ones inspiring a rare moment of complete honesty in him before he could think better of it.

"Don't think I could take having to bury you."

With a careful sigh, Tony shook his head. "Wish I could say it wouldn't happen, Gibbs, but neither one of us would believe it – it might never come to that, or you might end up having to someday... but at least not today."

_It was so close this time, God, what would we have done if..._

"Yeah. Not today."

Tony gave a tired grin, wanting to turn the conversation in a lighter direction. "Looks like I got a few more lives to spare though, huh Boss?"

Gibbs managed to hide a flinch at the memories Tony's words easily brought back to mind, of ruined buildings and unspoken goodbyes, of an encroaching loss that would have left a wound in all of them, in him, that would've never really healed; probably Tony didn't even remember having said what he did, otherwise Gibbs doubted he would've ever willingly broached the topic, joke or not.

He was able to keep down any outward reaction only by reminding himself that they had, against all odds, made it through, even if it might take a while for them to be completely back on their feet again. At least for today, they hadn't run out of second chances, and he was damn thankful for it, every single second that went by that he was talking to his boy, and not trying to make himself strong enough to be able to let him go. He couldn't imagine ever being that strong. If he had anything to say about it – and he sure as hell would – then he'd never have to be.

So instead of flinching, he allowed only a quiet smile, and nodded, rising to turn off all lights but the small wall lamp, and pulling the blanket higher up the younger agent's torso, discreetly ensuring that it was snugly situated. "'Course you do, DiNozzo – I lent you a couple of mine. You seem to need 'em a hell of a lot more often than I do," he said jokingly, as he settled back into his chair with a pillow behind his neck, ready to spend the night in it. He shut his eyes, and there was a long moment of silence where he started to drift off, thinking Tony already had.

Until, "And if I tell anyone you tucked me in?"

Gibbs smirked, not bothering to open his eyes. "Then you'll be needing a few more."

"Understood."

Another small pause, during which he could fairly hear the gears in the other man's head turning, and he resisted the familiar urge to sigh, knowing all he had to do was wait. He didn't need to wait long.

"When did they say I could leave? 'Cause I'm already almost sitting up on my o-"

"DiNozzo."

"Yeah Boss?"

"Sleep. Or I'll have them keep you here another month."

"Could I at least-"

"With Nurse Gordon in charge of your baths."

"Sleeping, Boss."


	11. AN Alternate Ending Posted

Hello all!

I want to take a minute to thank you all again for your absolutely, mind-blowingly **fantastic** response to 'Nine Lives', and for all the wonderful reviews everyone left – you are all an inspiration, and make writing all the more worth it!

At long last though, I'm happy to report that the promised alternate ending for this fic has been finished and posted under the title 'Melius Cras Fore' (yep, I'm back on a bit of a Latin kick – I can't help myself :P), and posted separately just so that it doesn't take away from the ending already posted in this one.

Feel free to read it if you're curious, or not, if you'd rather not go there!

Either way, take care everybody – love you guys!

Sincerely,

thebondgirl


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